'IN THE GARDEN OF THE KING'
FILM ON KING LEOPOLD II's BRUTAL GENOCIDE IN KONGO
A dark topic today, but one that was long over due to be covered on the big screen, although it was somewhat mentioned in last year's Tarzan. As 'Deadline' reports, Jonah Renck is set to helm IN THE GARDEN OF THE KING movie about the genocide of the Congolese people by
King Leopold II of Belgium between 1885 -1908. The story is told through the eyes of three protagonists, each living in different parts of the world in different eras: a present day Belgian aid worker; a Victorian shipping merchant and a colonial Congo girl warrior. Their fates are intertwined by their unexpected involvement in history’s greatest forgotten atrocity — the Belgian genocide in the Congo.
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| The face of pure evil - Leopold II of Belgium |
DEZZY'S HISTORY LESSON
The atrocities of Belgian king Leopold II have been largely hidden in Western world even though he was one of the greatest villains the world has ever seen who launched a shockingly brutal genocide of millions of black people after he conquered the Congo as his own colony in the 1880s! He also left millions of people maimed with their hands cut off if they failed to reach the daily rubber picking quota. Countless holes were dug out later on with dozens of thousands of severed limbs. His soldiers used to burn down whole villages, cutting of the heads and genitals of men and hanging women and children on the village palisades. The number of dead people in the exploited Congo was over ten million! That number bought Leopold's personal fortune which was estimated to be close to $500 million, a number that made him the richest man in the world of that time.
The atrocities of Belgian king Leopold II have been largely hidden in Western world even though he was one of the greatest villains the world has ever seen who launched a shockingly brutal genocide of millions of black people after he conquered the Congo as his own colony in the 1880s! He also left millions of people maimed with their hands cut off if they failed to reach the daily rubber picking quota. Countless holes were dug out later on with dozens of thousands of severed limbs. His soldiers used to burn down whole villages, cutting of the heads and genitals of men and hanging women and children on the village palisades. The number of dead people in the exploited Congo was over ten million! That number bought Leopold's personal fortune which was estimated to be close to $500 million, a number that made him the richest man in the world of that time.