Quotes About Injustice

Many of our subjects eagerly lust after Portuguese merchandise that your subjects have brought into our domains. To satisfy this inordinate appetite, they seize many of our black free subjects. . . . They sell them . . . after having taken these prisoners [to the coast] secretly or at night. . . . As soon as the captives are in the hands of white men they are branded with a red-hot iron.

it is easy to see how Stanley's painful poorhouse childhood may have fostered his cruel streak and the drive to place his mark on the world. The origin of the fiery passion for justice that fueled Morel is less evident. He

the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience." And

Sorry, but they're burning the State archives." The furnaces burned for eight days, turning most of the Congo state records to ash and smoke in the sky over Brussels. "I will give them my Congo," Leopold told Stinglhamber, "but they have no right to know what I did there.

Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha, who issued an extermination order (Vernichtungsbefehl): "Within the German boundaries every Herero, whether found with or without a rifle, with or without cattle, shall be shot. . . . "Signed The Great General of the Mighty Kaiser, von Trotha.

Hochschild describes the startling moment when he first learned that forced labor in the Congo had taken eight to ten million lives, making it one of the major killing grounds of modern times.

To those who had lived in Africa for millennia, of course, "there was nothing to discover, we were here all the time," as a future African statesman would put it. But to nineteenth-century Europeans, celebrating an explorer for "discovering" some new corner of Africa was, psychologically, a prelude to feeling that the continent was theirs for the taking.

And no one was reporting from the prison at Camp Funston, Kansas, where conscientious objectors to military service were shackled to their cell bars on tiptoe for eight hours a day.

He had all the bushes and trees cut down around his house at Bokatola so that from his porch he could use passersby for target practice. If

Two missionaries found one post where prisoners were killed by having resin poured over their heads, then set on fire. The list is much longer.

we live in a world of corpses, and only about some of them is there a hue and cry. True

And finally Money noted that the huge Dutch profits from Java depended on forced labor.

two white men were put on trial for a particularly gruesome set of murders in the French Congo; to celebrate Bastille Day, one had exploded a stick of dynamite in a black prisoner's rectum. Copying

When Leopold turned over his colony to Belgium he burned all the state records, declaring, 'I will give them my Congo, but they have no right to know what I did there.') Truly, this is the aching heart of the story: how a population comprised of millions of souls, spread over nearly a million square miles, rich in language and music and deeply honored traditions, can be muted and erased.

several children had laughed in the presence of a white man, who then ordered that all the servant boys in town be given fifty lashes. The second installment of twenty-five lashes was due at six o'clock the next morning. Lefranc managed to get these stopped, but was told not to make any more protests that interfered with discipline.

For him, colonies existed for one purpose: to make him and his country rich. "Belgium doesn't exploit the world," he complained to one of his advisers. "It's a taste we have got to make her learn.

Someone once tried to compliment Leopold by saying that he would make "an excellent president of a republic." Scornfully, he turned to his faithful court physician, Jules Thiriar, and asked, "What would you say, Doctor, if someone greeted you as 'a great veterinarian'?" The ruler of a colony would have no parliament to worry about.

The Irish, he told Lloyd George, were "like nothing so much as a lot of frightened children who dread being thrashed.

of white men they are branded with a red-hot

today's Namibia. The killing there was masked by no smokescreen of talk about philanthropy. It was genocide, pure and simple, starkly announced in advance.

Dr. Sheppard has not only stood before kings, but he has also stood against them. In pursuit of his mission of serving his race in its native land, this son of a slave . . . has dared to withstand all the power of Leopold.

I began to read more. The further I explored, the more it was clear that the Congo of a century ago had indeed seen a death toll of Holocaust dimensions.

When you have only ever experienced privilege, equality feels like oppression.

When all you've ever known is privilege, equality feels like oppression.