Forced Labor and Exploitation

In 1885, without the support of his government, King Leopold of Belgium created his own personal colony in what is now the DRC. Leopold's private army terrorized the indigenous population and basically turned the entire area into a forced labor camp for resource extraction. The human rights violations were so extreme that there was intense diplomatic pressure on the Belgian government to take official control of the colony, which it did by creating the Belgian Congo in 1908. Things improved slightly when the Belgian government took over, but not much.

Article 3 of the new Colonial Charter stated that: "Nobody can be forced to work on behalf of and for the profit of companies or privates". But, this was not enforced, and the Belgian government continued to impose forced labor on the population through less obvious methods.