I recently found out about the Congo Free State while looking up the Order of the Crown decoration that is given in the Belgium which happens to be a legacy of the Congo Free State but also found out that Belgium has not taken responsibility of it, so I was wondering what exactly happened in this case. I know that it was a personal property of King Leopold II, but who were employed by him for extraction of resources from the State and how would did the State work in the first place. I would like to have a brief but detailed(if possible) account on this. I have read the wiki article but it mostly tells about certain events and how the State was acquired, I would love to know its internal dynamics.
Many thanks, in advance.
Ok, let me try to answer a few of those questions:
This is not considered a Genocide because at this point it has not been proven as such. A Genocide implies deliberate executions of the "other" one as seen in WW2 and more recently the Rwanda Genocides. In the Congo free state there was no such attempts. There was only very hard labour.
People around the world were aware of some aspects of what happened in Congo but some people were trying to make it sound a lot worse than what really happened.
I'm not sure if you can read French, but I found this article very good as a start: http://www.lalibre.be/debats/opinions/le-congo-sous-leopold-ii-realite-et-fiction-51b8833ae4b0de6db9aa1459 .
You could also check the book Congo, Mythes et réalités by Jean Stengers who is a specialist about the Congo.
Good luck ;)
*Edit: Changed Belgian Congo to Congo Free State