"In 1876, Belgium’s King Leopold II (1835-1909) convened a geographical conference in Brussels. Leopold proposed establishing an international benevolent committee for the propagation of civilization among the peoples of Central Africa (the Congo region). ...
His primary objective was to exploit the lucrative ivory market in Central Africa by establishing a secure trade route between the Upper and Lower Congo.Under terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, Leopold pledged to suppress the East African slave trade; promote humanitarian policies; guarantee free trade within the colony; impose no import duties for twenty years; and encourage philanthropic and scientific enterprises.Contrary to his pledge, beginning in the mid-1880s Leopold issued a series of decrees that eventually violated these conditions. Leopold first decreed that the State asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo territory.By three successive decrees, Leopold reduced the rights of the Congolese in their land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the CFS terres domainales. Leopold further decreed that merchants limit their commercial operations in rubber to bartering with the natives....
By this time, Leopold had also established the Force Publique (FP) to campaign against the Arab slave trade in the Upper Congo, protect his economic interests, and suppress uprisings within the CFS, which were common. ....In addition, Leopold had been actually encouraging the slave trade among Arabs in the Upper Congo in return for slaves to fill the ranks of the FP. During the 1890s, the FP’s primary role was to exploit the natives as corvée laborers to promote the rubber trade...
Congolese tapping rubber trees, 1897 By 1890, facing considerable financial difficulty, Leopold applied for permission to levy import duties.However, in direct violation of his promises of free trade within the CFS under the terms of the Berlin Treaty, not only had the State become a commercial entity directly or indirectly trading within its dominion,[5] but also, Leopold had been slowly monopolizing a considerable amount of the ivory and rubber trade by imposing export duties on the resources traded by other merchants within the CFS....
Genocide scholar Adam Jones comments, “The result was one of the most brutal and all-encompassing corvée institutions the world has known . . . Male rubber tappers and porters were mercilessly exploited and driven to death.” Leopold's agents held the wives and children of these men hostage until they returned with their rubber quota. Those who refused or failed to supply enough rubber often had their villages burned down, children murdered, and their hands cut off...... Ironically, Leopold never visited the kingdom in which he committed such atrocities, to witness the tragedy of his greed."
More info