King emerges again, briefly...
2005-02-04 11:01
Kinshasa/Nairobi - Hours after being re-erected, a statue of colonial era ruler King Leopold II was removed from the centre of the Congolese capital Kinshasa on Thursday, news reports said Friday.
It was early on Thursday when Kinshasa residents found the towering statue, six metres high, had been re-erected in the middle of a roundabout near Kinshasa's main train station.
The bronze statue was still dirty from 40 years spent in an open-air dump. It had been pulled down by former ruler Mobutu Sese Seko in an attempt to erase the legacy of colonialism.
Leopold, who set up the Congo Free State as his personal possession and cash cow in the 1880s, has been judged by history as an exceptionally brutal ruler. Although the king never set foot in his vast colony, his rule left up to 10 million people dead.
During his reign over the Congo, Leopold made a fortune from the harvesting of wild rubber, by using local people as slave labourers.
The Congolese culture minister defended the re-erecting of the statue, saying he wanted to revive the history of his country.
One Kinshasa resident said king Leopold had exploited the country's raw materials and then left the people with nothing, while another said it was important to remember the past, just like the Jews remember the Holocaust.
But just hours later, the statue was taken away, as quietly as it had appeared. No comments were available from the government regarding the brief reappearance of the old king. - dpa
- SAPA