BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY: SLAVERY AND GENOSIDE IN THE BELGIAN CONGO 1888-1908 :

Under the terms of the General Act of the Berlin Conference, King Leopold pledge 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 pledges, begining in the mid-1880's Leopold issued a series of decrees that eventually violated three conditions. Leopold first decreed that the state asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo Colony territory.

By the successive decrees Leopold reduced the rights of the Congolese in there land to native villages and farms, essentially making nearly all of the CFS terres domaniales, Leopold further decreed that merchants limit there commercial operation in rubber to battering with the natives.