That every word of Nordenskiöld's letter to the Anti-Slavery Society is true I am quite convinced. The entire Indian population is enslaved in the mo… - Roger Casement

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That every word of Nordenskiöld's letter to the Anti-Slavery Society is true I am quite convinced. The entire Indian population is enslaved in the montaña and whereon the devil plant, the rubber tree, grows and can be tapped. The wilder the Indian the wickeder the slavery. Where he becomes 'civilised' and can read and write and study "cuenta" [accounts] with his "patron" then he ceases to be an Indian and becomes a "Peruvian" and himself an enslaver. As to the laws - all these South American republics have excellent laws on paper - and no sense of equity in the man behind the paper. The laws are beautiful and simple books - a fool could turn the leaves and apply them - an honest fool would make an ideal judge.

English
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About Roger Casement

Roger David Casement; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist. He worked for the British Foreign Office as a diplomat, becoming known as a humanitarian activist, and later as a poet and Easter Rising leader. Described as the "father of twentieth-century human rights investigations", he was honoured in 1905 for the Casement Report on the Congo and knighted in 1911 for his important investigations of human rights abuses in the rubber industry in Peru.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Roger David Casement Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn Ruairi Daithi Mac Easmainn Ruairí Mac Easmainn Sir Roger Casement
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Additional quotes by Roger Casement

On Sunday evening, natives brought me a mutilated lad, who's right hand had been hacked of quite recently, the cold thread was a century of lalu longa, a Belgian trading society, when i asked why they had not appealed to their commissar, i heard from them, well it is the commissar, it is the Bula Matari, who does these things to us.

Generally, a leading man fitted out an expedition with a few companions, partners in effort and initial expenditure, and with a gang of hired 'peons,' or, as they are called in that region, 'racionales' (half-breeds mostly who can read and write to distinguish them from the 'Indios', who are ignorant of all save forest lore), he journeyed to some part of the forest in search of tribes of wild Indians - 'infieles' or "infidels" - who could be easily subdued and reduced to work the wild rubber trees in the territory they inhabited. An Indian would promise anything for a gun or for some of the other tempting things offered as inducements to him to work rubber. Many Indians submitted to the alluring offer only to find that once in the "conquistadores'" books they had lost all liberty and were reduced to unending demands for more rubber and more varied tasks. A cacique or "capitan" might be bought over to dispose of the labor of all his clan, and as the cacique's influence was very great and the natural docility of the Indian a remarkable characteristic of the upper Amazon tribes the work of conquering a primitive people and reducing them to a continual strain of rubber finding was less difficult than might at first be supposed. Moreover, their arms of defense were puerile weapons to oppose the rifles of the "blancos."

The evidence against the Arana brothers was indeed overwhelming, and had the slightest desire existed in Iquitos to find out the precise truth or to stop the excesses on the Indians the time for action was then when the charges were first made, and publicly made in Iquitos, with a host of witnesses at hand proclaiming their desire to be interrogated and when even Indians themselves, with the scars and wheals of flagellations upon them were actually brought from the Putumayo so that the authorities might examine for themselves these victims of the crimes denounced."

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