Thread by @dermotfeenan

As statues of Leopold II are removed in Belgium, & we celebrate another anti-colonial/ anti-racist & Black Lives Matter action, I’m reminded, too, of fellow Ulsterman Roger Casement whose 1904 Report was instrumental in Leopold relinquishing his private holdings in Africa. [1/6]

Casement’s report included accounts of killings, mutilations, kidnappings & beatings of the population by soldiers of Leopold's Congo Administration. But Leopold’s cruelty wasn’t unique, it was intrinsic to colonialism & inextricably linked to the formation of racism. [2/6]

That cruelty was also enabled & enacted by a Brit, the much-feted yet notorious Henry Morton Stanley who, as agent for Leopold, opened up the Congo Basin region for occupation. Stanley, it was said, engaged in “heartless butchery” and wanton destruction. [3/6]

Fellow Brit Richard Francis Burton wrote that Stanley “shoots n*groes as if they were monkeys.” Stanley was never convicted. Instead, in that nauseating way which is all too familiar in Britain, he was knighted & memorialised in a statue (here: N 53° 11.015 W 003° 25.136). [4/6]

Casement would later report from Peru on the atrocities committed by the Anglo-Peruvian Rubber Company on indigenous peoples whom they forced into unpaid labour (below). Meanwhile, the colonial powers, including Britain, continued to violently plunder worldwide. [5/6]

Casement was later convicted of high treason for conspiring with Germany & attempting to transport weapons into Ireland to help force out the British. In a painting of his trial, he stares straight at the viewer as if to say: history will tell. Well, Leopold? [6/6]

#EndRacism