A copy of the film "Congo - White King, Red Rubber, Black
Death" is deposited in locker No. 55 in the entrance hall
to the Royal Museum of Central Africa, Brussels.
"The story of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal
colonisation of central Africa, turning it into a vast
rubber-harvesting labour camp in which millions died." -
BBC 2003.
In 2007 while in an antique book store in Antwerp I was
told this story; "that Congo - White King, Red Rubber,
Black Death was banned from the official circuit (of movie
theaters); playing only at alternative movie-festivals and
then only as a censored version".
Louis Michel, former deputy prime minister and foreign
minister of Belgium, attacked the film as; "a tendentious
diatribe".
However, Peter Bate, the maker of the film, has stated;
"the Belgian government and royal family didn’t want it to
be shown, but Belgium is still a democracy, so it was shown
on Belgian TV in 2004 and 2005".
The Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren outside
Brussels was founded by Leopold himself, to raise money for
his project in Africa.
