A
photograph shared thousands of times in multiple posts shows a black
child standing on a platform, surrounded by white men holding a rope.
Captions claim the picture shows Belgians preparing to hang a child in
the Congo in 1908. However, US military historians told us the men’s
clothing suggests they are American soldiers. We’re still trying to
track down the source of this image. Can you help?
The photo
has been shared on Facebook, for example in this post, which we’ve
archived, shared more than 69,000 times. The caption reads: “This is in
1908. Belgians reading the Bible before hanging a 7 year old black child
in the Congo under King Leopold. The boy was hanged because his father
did not produce enough wheat for the colonialists."
The photo has
also been shared on Twitter here, here and here, where captions also
claim it shows Belgians preparing to hang a child in the Congo.
AFP
contacted several specialist historians in Belgium who said they had
never seen the photo before, although it was “very probably” not taken
in the Congo.
“Atrocities
were mostly committed against adults -- women were kidnapped and men
were killed. Children, on the other hand, were often indirect victims of
the system of terror, not of hanging,” Pierre-Luc Plasman, author of
Leopold II, Potentat congolais (Leopold II, Tyrant of the Congo) said in
an email.
“Violence during village attacks was brutal and immediate, not staged (like in the photograph).”
From
1885 to 1908, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the
Congo was known as the Congo Free State. Under the rule of King Leopold
II of Belgium, private companies were given free rein to extract the
country’s rich natural resources. Colonialists committed well-documented
atrocities against the Congolese people during this period, including
the murder of labourers who failed to meet their production quotas for
goods such as rubber and ivory.
After an international outcry, the
Belgian parliament voted to annex the territory as a colony, ending
Leopold’s personal rule over it. The Belgian Congo remained a Belgian
colony until independence in 1960.
Despite the atrocities
committed by Belgian colonists at the turn of the century, “we don’t
have any knowledge or proof of children hanged in the Congo,” Guido
Gryseels, director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium,
told AFP.
Historians also pointed out that while men in the
photograph appear to be wearing military uniform, it is not the uniform
that would have been worn by Belgian troops in 1906.
“The uniform of Force Publique soldiers, the only m
ilitary
presence in the Congo Free State, was reglemented and did not look like
the uniforms in the photograph,” said Pierre Lierneux, historian at the
Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels.
“European
officers wore white canvas uniforms or blue tunics; khaki was not worn,
except in a personal capacity, and was slowly introduced from the Great
War.”
Below is a screenshot showing a uniform worn in the Congo
Free State, as seen on Military Sun Helmets, a website about historical
military helmets.
We used a reverse image search to try to find more clues about where the photo came from.
A
search on the Russian search engine Yandex revealed similar versions
posted online -- but without the sides of the photo cropped, showing
more of the background.
Jean-Philippe Belleau, an anthropology
professor at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, said the
cylindrical pump on the left suggests the photo was taken later than
1908, as the Facebook post suggests.
“The picture may have been taken between 1920 and around 1935, maybe even 1940,” he said. “Where it was taken is the question.”
He added that he was “so intrigued by this picture that I had to stop writing my current book!”
A
reverse image search on Google suggested the picture was published as
early as July 30, 2004 on a web page under the username @the__hayaa.
That
publication is no longer available, but the text under the link
translates from Arabic as: “In 1730, the American parliament passed a
law for Protestants, which legalised the extermination of American
Indians, but what’s more, it also issued a decision to provide a reward
of 100 pounds for each scalp”.
Other earlier posts include a
blog on December 17, 2015, which includes the photo in an article about
violence towards black people in the United States.
AFP contacted US military historians, who said the men’s uniforms suggested they were American.
“The
men are wearing Army-type field shirts (square pocket flaps) and their
trousers are breeches,” Owen Linlithgow Conner, Uniforms and Heraldry
Curator at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia, said in
an email.
Does this photo really show Belgians hanging a child in the Congo?
A
photograph shared thousands of times in multiple posts shows a black
child standing on a platform, surrounded by white men holding a rope.
Captions claim the picture shows Belgians preparing to hang a child in
the Congo in 1908. However, US military historians told us the men’s
clothing suggests they are American soldiers. We’re still trying to
track down the source of this image. Can you help?
The photo
has been shared on Facebook, for example in this post, which we’ve
archived, shared more than 69,000 times. The caption reads: “This is in
1908. Belgians reading the Bible before hanging a 7 year old black child
in the Congo under King Leopold. The boy was hanged because his father
did not produce enough wheat for the colonialists.”
A screenshot of the post on Facebook, taken on April 23, 2019
The
photo has also been shared on Twitter here, here and here, where
captions also claim it shows Belgians preparing to hang a child in the
Congo.
AFP contacted several specialist historians in Belgium
who said they had never seen the photo before, although it was “very
probably” not taken in the Congo.
“Atrocities were mostly
committed against adults -- women were kidnapped and men were killed.
Children, on the other hand, were often indirect victims of the system
of terror, not of hanging,” Pierre-Luc Plasman, author of Leopold II,
Potentat congolais (Leopold II, Tyrant of the Congo) said in an email.
“Violence during village attacks was brutal and immediate, not staged (like in the photograph).”
From
1885 to 1908, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the
Congo was known as the Congo Free State. Under the rule of King Leopold
II of Belgium, private companies were given free rein to extract the
country’s rich natural resources. Colonialists committed well-documented
atrocities against the Congolese people during this period, including
the murder of labourers who failed to meet their production quotas for
goods such as rubber and ivory.
After an international outcry,
the Belgian parliament voted to annex the territory as a colony, ending
Leopold’s personal rule over it. The Belgian Congo remained a Belgian
colony until independence in 1960.
Despite the atrocities
committed by Belgian colonists at the turn of the century, “we don’t
have any knowledge or proof of children hanged in the Congo,” Guido
Gryseels, director of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium,
told AFP.
Historians also pointed out that while men in the
photograph appear to be wearing military uniform, it is not the uniform
that would have been worn by Belgian troops in 1906.
“The
uniform of Force Publique soldiers, the only military presence in the
Congo Free State, was reglemented and did not look like the uniforms in
the photograph,” said Pierre Lierneux, historian at the Royal Museum of
the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels.
“European
officers wore white canvas uniforms or blue tunics; khaki was not worn,
except in a personal capacity, and was slowly introduced from the Great
War.”
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