Renter's agency has received some information from Mr. A. Parminter,
an experienced officer of the Congo State, as to the methods pursued by the Belgians in that region. He confirms the worst stories in circulation. He says the regions drained by the Congo, Upper and Lower, have only been "opened up" on their banks, and the officials being entrusted with unlimited powers, endeavour to raise money for the State and for themselves by excessive cruelties. The villages are ordered to provide rubber, and if they do not the soldiers are let loose. Mr. Parminter actually saw numbers of ears and hands cut off negroes in proof that the work of punishment had been honestly performed. In one case an officer gave two women who refused some information two hundred lashes with " cruel " whips of hippopotamus' hide, and finally "ordered his men to mutilate the women, and then left them to die as they lay." Two Belgian officers, it should be added, aware of the facts, refused this ruffian hospitality as an assassin. The names of these officers are given in the narrative.
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