Correspondence and Report from His Majesty's Consul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo [and Further Correspondence]

by Roger Casement

Apologizing for trespassing on your attention at so great a length, I beg you to accept, &c.

(Signed) JOHN WHITEHEAD

(B.)

The Rev. J. Whitehead to Governor-General of Congo State.

Baptist Missionary Society, Lukolela, Haut Congo,
September 7, 1903.

Dear Sir,

I have recently paid a visit, along with my wife, to the inland district of Lukolela, and I have had related to me such accounts, and have myself seen such evidence of what seems to me both illegal and cruel occurrences, that my blood had been made to boil with indignation and abhorrence. I take upon myself the humanitarian duty, which is truly the call of God, to supplement my letter to you on the subject of sleep-sickness and the general decline of these peoples, and confirm some of my statements by the presentation of facts of which I have the knowledge. It may be that in some of my statements I may be trusting to bruised reeds, but, as far as possible, I am persuaded of the truth of what I present to your consideration.

On the 16th August, 1902, I called the attention of the Commissaire-Général at Léopoldville to a murder which had been committed by a soldier by shooting two men while still in the chain. They had been sent, in addition, to a youth who was walking unchained to draw water from a pool some 2 kilom. distant from the lower post of Lukolela by a telegraph clerk named M. Gadot (M. de Becker being the Chef de Poste resident at the upper station). The unchained youth was flogged by the soldier by a chicotte taken from a house on the way, and the youth fled, and the soldier shot the two men left. My letter was taken down river by a steamer which passed here in course of a week. Nothing was done by the men in charge of the posts here until, by letter of the 15th September, 1902, I was requested by the Chef de Poste to send up my witnesses. Those witnesses could have been had the same day of the deed if the officers had done their duty. I went up with such witnesses as I was able to get together, and their evidence was taken. Nothing more was heard of the matter until the 24th April of this year, when I received a note from the State Agent here asking for certain people attached to our station, whose names he gave. He did not mention the reason of their being required at Léopoldville, but I guessed the reason. I was only able to send one of them, one other having returned to his home, and another being near to death. The man resident in the village, who was one of the witnesses I took up previously, was sent for to the State post and detained, and not allowed to return to make any provision of his journey to the pool. My apprentice and this man went down to the pool to bear witness concerning that murder; on the way the captain of the steamer ordered them off to carry and cut firewood; they demurred, naturally, but for peace sake did a little. In a storm of rain the shelter of the large steamer was denied them, and they spent the night sitting on the beach—the two of them beneath one frail umbrella. When they arrived at the pool, no one seemed to know why they had come; they were sent from pillar to post, then there seems to have been discovered some reason or other to interrogate them. The soldier concerned was with his fellows just the same as though there was no trial, and had, indeed, been no wrong done. But for the friendly offices of a sister Mission these two witnesses would have fared very badly during the six weeks they were detained at Léopoldville; they were practically shelterless and unfed; even as it was, they were hungry enough. At length they returned by our Mission steamer. It seems that the only sufferers in the matter were myself, in the loss of my apprentice for six weeks, and his loss of six weeks’ wages, together with his considerable discomfort and the loss of the man from the village—not much, perhaps, in the eyes of the officials of the State, but much to them; then all their suffering is easily traceable to myself, for if I had not drawn the Commissaire’s attention to the murder no witnesses would have been necessary, for who would have mentioned it? Considering the way in which this matter was dealt with, and the witnesses I produced were treated, I hesitate to bring other matters to light. The treatment these witnesses received only strengthens the distrust of the State, which, in this place, everywhere abounds. I therefore appeal for just treatment of witnesses and those who bring wrong-doing to light.

On the 6th March, 1903, I reported to the State Agent here (M. Lecomte) that I had seen at Mibenga a Chief, named Mopali, of Ngelo, who had been carried from the Lukolela post, where he had been imprisoned, so as to induce his village to bring more rubber. His head was wounded as with an iron instrument of some kind, his lips were swollen as if from a severe blow, and his legs were damaged as with blows from sticks. He and his bearer asserted that these wounds were given him while he was chained and made to carry firewood. M. Lecomte replied that the man had been seen by him before he left, and he was then all right and asked for my witnesses. I replied that the man himself and bearer were my informants. He said he wished to trace the doers of the deed. Nothing more was heard of the matter, so later I acquainted the Directeur-Général at Léopoldville by letter, dated the 10th July, of the facts. Meanwhile, up to the present, I have heard of nothing being done in the matter, only a repetition of a similar case.

I was at the village of Mopali on the 18th August, and I inquired for the poor fellow; some said he was dead, but most said that he had been carried by his wife, at his own request, away out of the way, so that he should not be found. He was afraid of the State chaining him again. From them I heard he had been even worse maltreated than at first I knew; they told me that his feet had been cut so that he despaired of walking again, and those who had seen him last said he got along by dragging himself along on his buttocks. I asked them pointedly whether they heard from Mopali where he got his wounds; was it not after he left the white man’s presence? With one voice the little crowd I asked replied, “No; he received those wounds while in the chain.” I gathered also that at first they were forced to take five baskets of rubber, and to make them take ten they had chained up Mopali, and that two more baskets had been recently added.