“I cannot believe that the full extent of the illegality of the system of arbitrary impositions, followed by dire and illegal punishments, which is in force over so wide an area of the country I have recently visited, is known to, or properly appreciated by, your Excellency or the Central Administration of the Congo State Government.”
Also after recording some of the outrages practised upon women and children he had witnessed in order to obtain food supplies, or compel the production of india-rubber, he said, in referring to one of these so-called trading factories:—
“I must confess with pain and astonishment that, instead of visiting a trading or commercial establishment, I felt I was visiting a penal settlement.”
A study of the case will show the successive steps by which the statement made on p. 7 of the “Notes” (p. 5, supra) is reached:—
“L’enquête montre Epondo, enfin acculé, rétractant ses premières affirmations au Consul, et avouant avoir été influencé par les gens de son village.”
The facts throw a light on the motives which inspired, or the influences which compelled, this retractation by the mutilated boy other than the “Notes” afford, and show that a not unimportant part of the inquiry was conducted under conditions which scarcely merit the description of an “enquête judiciaire dans les conditions normales en dehors de toute influence étrangère,” as, on p. 6 of the “Notes” (p. 4, supra), it is said to have been.
A noteworthy illustration of the method adopted to arrive at an impartial finding in this case will be found to consist in the fact that an inquiry into grave charges preferred against an agent of the Lulanga Company was conducted in part through agents of that society—itself primarily involved; that the Substitut du Procureur d’État visited the district as the guest of that Company, putting up at its stations and travelling on its steamer in company with its agents, and that the “retractation” of Epondo only took place when the boy had been removed to the head-quarters of that Company, on the steamer of that Company, surrounded, not by friends, but by the agents of the very Company which had an obvious interest in securing a withdrawal of the charge.
Had the “retractation” of Epondo, first made at Mampoko, the head-quarters of the Lulanga Company, on the 8th October (see p. 31, “Notes”) (p. 35, supra) been sincere and quite uninfluenced by the environment to which he found himself removed at Bonginda, its sincerity would best have been demonstrated by its being repeated before Mr. Armstrong at Bonginda, whence the boy had just been removed.
Mr. Armstrong had cognizance of the case from the first. Bonginda lies only some 8 miles from Mampoko, and it would have been but just to Mr. Armstrong, as well as much more convincing, if, when the boy altered his statement, he had been taken back to where only the day before (see p. 29, “Notes”) (p. 33, supra) he had reiterated in the presence of Mr. Armstrong the original charge against Kelengo.
Instead of adopting this simple course, however, the boy, having been brought to “retract,” was carried off to Coquilhatville—fully 80 miles away—and a week later a declaration is required from Mr. Faris, a missionary, whose residence was situated far from the scene of the occurrences, who had no knowledge of the boy’s antecedents, or any means of testing his statement by cross-examination or otherwise.