Severed Hands Those who could not meet their rubber quota were punished by death. Since there was no way to really supervise the Force Publique away from the ports, there was no way to tell if they had actually carried out these executions. To make sure their soldiers were doing as commanded, the colonial administration decreed that the soldiers would have to cut off the hands of those they killed and bring the hands back as evidence.

This led to a situation in which the quotas were partially paid in severed hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighboring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill. In theory, each right hand proved a killing. In practice, to save ammunition soldiers sometimes "cheated" by simply cutting off the hand and leaving the victim to live or die. More than a few survivors later said that they had lived through a massacre by acting dead, not moving even when their hands were severed, and waiting till the soldiers left before seeking help. In some instances a soldier could shorten his service term by bringing more hands than the other soldiers, which led to widespread mutilations and dismemberment.

Rubber Harvesting Rubber vines are not easy to harvest. You have to cut them repeatedly and let them drip slowly into pots. It could take hours in good conditions for all the rubber to drip out and you would have to do this several times per vine. If you did not watch your pots, other people would steal them. But after one harvesting, a vine would not be ready again for over a year, so workers had to abandon the easy vines for harder vines much higher off the ground. Many workers fell to their deaths harvesting these vines.

In desperation to meet their unreasonable quotas, people would also use another method where they would twist the cut vines, collecting the rubber on their arms as a sort of sleeve. It would have to be peeled off with a knife, as it would generally stick to the skin. You could tell rubber workers by large scars down their arms, where the knives had taken more than the rubber.

Torture Those who failed to meet quotas were often brutally beaten. Typically this was done with a whip called the Chicotte, made from hippopotamus hide—very hard, very strong, and very sharp. It would cut into the skin very quickly left huge open wounds on the backs of those that it was used against. For severe punishment you might be lashed 100 times with this whip but the wounds from that number of lashes were so severe that many died when whipped that frequently.

Those whipped were also humiliated Those whipped were also humiliated. They were whipped naked, usually tied to sticks in a spread-eagle fashion. When whips could not be found, men were simply kicked or beaten—often to death. Many were chained to trees by their necks and left for days. Others were mutilated. Hands were frequently cut off. One colonial administrator even had a fence around his command post on which were nailed the penises of those that had resisted his rule.

Kidnapping One way that workers were motivated was by kidnapping and torturing their families. Families were often taken. If the worker failed in their quotas, their wives or children might be shot, mutilated, beaten, or raped. There are no statistics on the amount of sexual abuse directed towards the women of the Congo by the colonial administration but it is considered by most sources on the matter to have been extremely widespread.

Sometimes wives or daughters would not be returned even after the worker met their quota but would continue to be tortured and raped until the family could fulfill extra quotas or buy back their kidnapped family members with money or livestock.

Massacres Towns or villages that refused to work with the administration or that regularly missed their quotas were often destroyed. The people would be slaughtered. Sometimes their heads would be cut off and hanged around the village as a warning. Sometimes the women would be raped first or even taken as sex slaves by the soldiers. The villages would then be burned to the ground.

Massacres were frequent Massacres were frequent. There was no real record keeping of how often they happened but one missionary reported that 45 towns were massacred in his one region of the Congo (there were 11 regions) in just the five years he was there. As with many murders conducted by the colonial soldiers, the massacres were proven to their superiors by cutting the hands off of the dead. Deliveries were often made to administrators of baskets loaded with severed hands.

Zappo Zaps The Force Publique had very little control of the easternmost regions of the Congo. Instead, to administer these regions, the colonial administrators relied on alliances with native tribes— often looking for tribes that were already feared by the others. One of the tribes that was tasked with policing the eastern provinces were the Zappo Zaps. This tribe was already feared because they were slave raiders, who wandered the country fighting wars to take slaves to sell to other counties.

The Zappo Zaps were also cannibals The Zappo Zaps were also cannibals. When they won a war, the men often ate some of the dead. They also frequently ate parts off the living. This is the only time in history you will read the horrific phrase “cannibal slave raiders.” Villages in the east that resisted would have the Zappo Zaps sent after them. The men would be killed, some would be eaten, the women and children would be taken as slaves.