You are now entering Wunaamin Miliwundi Country

BY LLOYD GORMAN

Bell Gorge, Wunaamin Miliwundi Ranges Conservation Park

IT MIGHT WELL BE THE ONE AND ONLY TIME A ‘KING HIT’ COULD BE SAID TO BE JUSTIFIED OR EVEN DESERVED. AROUND THIS TIME LAST YEAR AT THE PEAK OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTERS AND ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT, THE KING LEOPOLD RANGES – A 600KM LONG MOUNTAIN CHAIN FORMING THE SOUTHWESTERN EDGE OF THE KIMBERLEY PLATEAU, NAMED IN HONOUR OF LEOPOLD II OF BELGIUM – CEASED TO EXIST AND OFFICIALLY BECAME THE WUNAAMIN MILIWUNDI RANGES.

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WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF HISTORICAL BRUTALITY

At a key moment in world history, the name change was ushered in by the McGowan government, but its origins could be traced back several state administrations. But peering back even further into the past, it can be seen the origins of the tide of change against Leopold started to turn more than a hundred years ago, thanks to the incredible parts played by some Irish men, including a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. “[Wunaamin-Miliwundi] is a combination of the Ngarinyin and Bunuba traditional names for those ranges,” WA’s Aboriginal Affairs minister Ben Wyatt said on July 3 2020, the day the blot on the local landscape was officially removed and replaced with the consent and input of the traditional owners of that country. “It’s a combined name, recognising those ranges cover across a couple of traditional country areas. It’s much more appropriate for what those ranges are, and what they represent as a key Kimberley landmark. The former name of these spectacular ranges was not worthy and did not reflect the deep cultural history of these lands. It has troubled me for years that an extraordinary area of Western Australia should be named in honour of a person who is widely regarded as an evil tyrant with no connection to our state. The Traditional Owners of the region have always known the Ranges by their own name, so it’s momentous to finally remove reference to King Leopold II and formalise the name.” The ranges are a mere 2,300km north of Perth and a popular outback area with visitors to the region. They were originally named by Alexander Forrest (ancestor of Andrew Forrest) in 1879 in honour of Belgian King Leopold II, who reigned from 1885 to 1908. Despite being one of the smallest European nations, the Belgian monarch’s empire building ambitions matched those of bigger powers such as Germany, France and England. In particular the head of the tiny state founded and laid total claim to the Congo Free State – today the Democratic Republic of the Congo – from 1885 until his death. His private ownership of the Congo was approved by the other big powers at the 1884/85 Berlin Conference in a bid to improve the lives of the native people. The opposite would be the case. An ‘absentee landlord’, Leopold mercilessly milked the entire country of ivory and later natural rubber for his personal gain. The native population were forced to work as slaves and lived under the brutal and ruthless force of mercenaries who enforced the king’s wishes. When quotes of rubber were not met, the hands of men, women and children were hacked off and collected as proof of the mercenaries enforcement measures (above), just one form of atrocity and oppression carried out in Leopold’s name. It is estimated that as many as ten to 15 million Congolese died from torture, brutality and enslavement as a direct result of the way he ran the country. At home, Leopold was popular with his people and considered a builder monarch who strived to make Belgium a powerful and prestigious country both domestically and on the world stage. The Congo allowed him to do that. Even by the standards of the day – when the European powers lusted for colonies with scant regard for the wellbeing of the native peoples – Leopold’s blood-thirsty rule caused disquiet in ‘civilised’ quarters. Just one year before his death, control of the Congo was seized from the monarch by the Belgian government and when the time came, his funeral procession was booed in the streets. By sheer coincidence the events leading up to the inglorious end for the tyrant were precipitated in very different ways by two Dublin men – who both happened to be gun runners.

IT STARTED WITH THE STOKES AFFAIR

Charles Henry Stokes (left) was a colourful character whose death in the Congo in 1895 marked the start of the turn in public opinion against Leopold’s cultivated persona as a benevolent despot. Stokes was born in Dublin (1852) and went to school in Enniskillen. He was twenty years old when his father died, and together with his mother he went to Liverpool where he found an administrative job with the Church Missionary Society. Not long afterwards he became a missionary himself and set off for Africa (initially Zanzibar) in 1878. Stokes had a talent for this work and would organise massive ‘caravans’ and expeditions into regions he wanted to Christianise. He married a European nurse on one of these caravans in 1883, with whom he would have a baby daughter who only survived a week. Stokes remarried – this time to an African woman related to a chief of the tribe – and also had other local concubines with whom he fathered children, for which he was excommunicated by the Church of England. By now a veteran explorer and leader, the former missionary used his skills, experience and connections to become a trader, including in ivory and guns which he sold to British, German and other groups. His prolific arms trading upset the leader of the Belgian forces in the region, who tracked him down and arrested him in his tent in December 1894. Stokes was found guilty by a military field court of selling guns and gunpowder to the Afro-Arab enemies of Belgian and was sentenced to death. He was hanged from a tree the next day. There were many legal problems with the execution, including that as a British subject, Stokes was entitled to appeal the judgement, but didn’t. When the press got wind of the story it sparked international outrage and became widely known as the Stokes Affair. Britain and Germany demanded that Belgium put the officer responsible for Stoke’s death on trial. Britain and Germany were paid compensation by Belgium but more importantly the Belgians declared that Europeans could not be killed by martial decree or death sentence. Stokes’ remains were returned to his family. The incident saw widespread British public opinion turn against the idea of King Leopold and helped bring about the establishment of the influential Congo Reform Association.

A JAMESON IN CONGO

It was not the first time an Irish man was at the heart of a horrific episode in the country. James Sligo Jameson (left) – the grandson of the original Irish whiskey maker – was the only Irish officer to take part in the 1887 expedition to explore the ‘dark heart’ of Africa by travelling up the Congo river. That expedition was led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh American adventurer and agent for King Leopold, who helped him carve out the country.

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The story goes that Jameson offered six white handkerchiefs to a local tribal leader to witness someone being killed and to watch them being cannibalised, so that he could draw the scene. Jameson wrote to his wife to explain there had been a terrible mistake. “I sent my boy for six handkerchiefs, thinking it was all a joke, and that they were not in earnest, but presently a man appeared, leading a young girl of about 10 years old by the hand, and then I witnessed the most horribly sickening sight I am ever likely to see in my life,” Jameson wrote. “He plunged a knife quickly into her breast twice, and she fell on her face, turning over on her side. Three men then ran forward, and began to cut up the body of the girl; finally her head was cut off, and not a particle remained, each man taking his piece away down to the river to wash it. The most extraordinary thing was that the girl never muttered a sound, nor struggled, until she fell.” Jameson admitted to sketching the horror in front of him, after they had begun to dismember the body. News of the grisly incident reached The Times of London before he could account for his version of events. A fever claimed Jameson’s life a few months later, before he was able to defend his name.

THE FALL OF KING CONGO

In Ireland, Roger Casement (left) is hailed as one of the great champions of Irish freedom. Curiously it was his career as a British diplomat in the Congo that helped guide him towards this status as a national hero who also happened to help in no small part bring about the downfall of King Leopold. Casement was born in September 1864 in Dublin to an Anglo-Irish family and grew up in Sandycove. As a young man, Casement went to Africa where at the age of 27 he joined the British Colonial Service. Before that however, he had worked in the Congo for Henry Morton Stanley and the African International Association which was set up as a front to further King Leopold’s interests and eventual control over the Congo in 1885. In the years following the Stokes Affair, word of terrible atrocities and abuses against the native people refused to go away. In 1895, ten years after the Congo became the private property of the Belgian royal, another Irish missionary – Dr Henry Grattan (right), the Dublin born grandson of Arthur Guinness – raised the alarm in public once more. Guinness, who along with his son of the same name, set up the Congo-Balolo Mission in 1889. King Leopold eventually promised him action would be taken, but conditions remained as bad as ever and showed no sign of improvement. On May 20 1903 the House of Commons passed the motion: “That the Government of the Congo Free State having, at its inception, guaranteed to the Powers that its Native subjects should be governed with humanity, and that no trading monopoly or privilege should be permitted within its dominions, this House requests His Majesty’s Government to confer with the other Powers, signatories of the Berlin General Act by virtue of which the Congo Free State exists, in order that measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that State.” The daunting task of substantiating those allegations and claims of human rights abuses was given to the British consul in the Congo, Roger Casement. But Casement was perfectly suited for the role. He had several postings in different part of the country in his years as a diplomat, he knew the country and its people well and even better - he could speak several of their languages well. He went to great lengths and efforts over four weeks collecting as much information and evidence as possible, including gathering evidence and the accounts of eye-witnesses and survivors of the murderous regime, as well as overseers, workers and even mercenaries. The result of his relentless research

was a detailed 40 page report that laid bare the rampant and routine brutality on the native people. Here are just two small sections taken from that report detailing one of the many locations he visited in July 1903. “We reached Lukolela, where I spent two days. This district had, when I visited it in 1887, numbered fully 5,000 people; today the population is given, after a careful enumeration, at less than 600. The reasons given me for their decline in numbers were similar to those furnished elsewhere, namely, sleeping-sickness, general ill-health, insufficiency of food, and the methods employed to obtain labor from them by local officials and the exactions levied on them.” “Two cases (of mutilation) came to my actual notice while I was in the lake district. One, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree; the other a young lad of 11 or 12 years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the wrist... In both these cases the Government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose names were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during the rubber regime, all except one were dead at the date of my visit.” Casement returned to London in 1904 to deliver his report in person. It was hugely controversial. Vested political and business interests in the exploitation of the Congolese rejected it but when the shocking nature of its content became known, it sparked a large public reaction. Private individuals and groups came together and formed the powerful Congo Reform Association lobby to campaign for better conditions. Governments followed their lead. The British Parliament recalled an assembly of the 14 nations that signed the 1885 Berlin Agreement, which had sanctioned Leopold’s ownership of the African country. This, together with pressure from the United States, saw the Belgian Parliament set up an independent commission of inquiry. The King tried to discredit the inquiry but it reinforced the findings

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Left: Casement Aerodrome (named for Roger Casement) is a military airbase to the southwest of Dublin. It is the headquarters and the sole airfield of the Irish Air Corps, and is also used for other government purposes.

of the Casement report. As a result, in November 1908 the parliament of Belgium took back control of the territory from the King and became responsible for its administration as a colony. Leopold said the parliament did not have the right to know what he did in the Congo Free State and concealed his own crimes by having his records destroyed. About twelve months later he died and the funeral cortege of the once popular monarch who had ruled his country for 44 years, was booed through the streets over the Congo.

THE BIRTH OF AN IRISH REVOLUTIONARY

Roger Casement could not have known it at the time, but his return to London would have a profound impact on his life and the future of Ireland. In 1904, he took the opportunity to visit Ireland and while he was there he joined the Gaelic League, a cultural organisation which promoted the Irish language. He also held talks with the Irish Parliamentary Party to lobby them for their support in the British parliament in relation to the Congo. But the interaction also saw some of the politics of Irish freedom rub off on him. Towards the end of his time back in England, Casement was despatched to Brazil for his next posting but before he left he joined the newly formed Sinn Fein in 1905. His exposure of the evil excesses of the rubber trade in Africa were once again called upon in 1908 to help expose similar if not even greater abuses of indigenous tribes at the hands of the Peruvian Amazon Company, a British company. On 17 March 1911 Casement submitted his report to the British foreign secretary. Without the luxury of delving into that issue, it is worth mentioning that it was for this work that Casement was awarded a knighthood later that year. It is also worth noting that the determination and unflinching nerve he showed in bringing unspeakable atrocities to public awareness and accountability against powerful forces have seen him called the “father of twentieth-century human rights investigations”. Aged 49, Casement retired from the British consular mid 1913 and returned to Ireland at a critical time in the country’s history. By the end of that year, he had helped form the Irish Volunteers and worked tirelessly to raise funds for the fledgling force, including travelling to America with its large sympathetic and cashed up Irish community. Casement worked closely alongside John Devoy, the same man who had helped mastermind the Catalpa Escape of the six Fenian prisoners and colleagues of John Boyle O’Reilly from Fremantle in 1876. Most Irish people or those with a knowledge of Irish history will be familiar with some of the highlights of Casement’s career as an Irish nationalist leader. The daring - even brazen- daylight Howth gun running incident in July 1914 which saw 1,500 rifles openly smuggled to arm the Irish Volunteers, was organised by Casement. It was another gun smuggling attempt that brought about his downfall. World War I broke out shortly after the events at Howth and Casement made advances to the Germans and eventually secured their agreement to provide 20,000 rifles, machine guns and ammunition to the Irish fight for independence. The weapons were to be delivered on April 21 1916 to Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, Co. Kerry where Casement and co-conspirators would receive them. The German sub was apprehended by the British navy and Casement, who was at that time suffering from a bad bout of malaria he picked up in the Congo and too sick to make a getaway, was arrested at Ardfert. The former British diplomat was arrested for High Treason and hanged at Pentoville Prison in London in August. He was 51. His body was buried in the prison grounds. It took fifty years for British authorities to agree to the repatriation of Casement’s remains to Ireland for burial in Ireland, as Casement had requested.

Above: July 28th, 1960 – Irish soldiers boarding the plane to leave Baldonnell airport for Congo just a few months before the Niemba Ambush (left)

A CONGO IRISH CRISIS

As it happens, the Irish public were at this time well acquainted with the Congo. Indeed, it was a raw memory in the minds of many Irish around that time. The Congo gained its independence from Belgium on June 30 1960, and almost immediately a horrendously complicated and bloody civil war started as the mineral rich province of Katanga in the south declared itself an independent state. At the request of the government of the newly created Republic of the Congo, the United Nations was called in to restore order and suppress the Katangan separatists. Ireland’s bid for UN membership was finally realised in 1955 (after being blocked for nearly a decade by the Soviet Union) and the country was eager to prove its credentials on the world stage and offered to send soldiers as a Peacekeeping force in the conflict. The first detachment of Irish soldiers – made up of the 33nd Battalion – arrived in July 1960 and they didn’t have to wait long for their baptism of fire. On November 8, an Irish army unit of eleven men were on a routine patrol when they were attacked by a large force of Luba tribesmen – also known as Balubas – armed with bow and arrows and blades and clubs. Eight of the soldiers were killed outright (and their bodies badly mutilated), while another badly wounded man escaped into the bush, only to be killed the next day. Just two survived the incident which became known as the Niemba Ambush. Half a million people turned out on the streets of Dublin to watch the funeral cortege that took their bodies to Glasnevin cemetery. It was the first time Irish soldiers had fought and died in action since the Irish civil war almost forty years earlier, and the word ‘balubas’ is still commonly used in Ireland today to describe someone or something that went berserk.

Above: Niemba Plaque in Cathal Brugha Barracks, November 2020.

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UNDER SIEGE

In their four years in the Congo, the Irish Defence Forces deployed 6,000 Irish soldiers to the Congo – including my late grandfather Laurence Gorman – of whom 26 died while in service there. Incredibly none of those casualties happened during what was perhaps the single greatest battle ever fought by the Irish army. On September 13 1961 a contingent of 155 Irish Peacekeepers – made up largely of men from the army base in Athlone – were sent to the mining town of Jadotville to protect the Belgian settlers and local population. Their arrival was not welcomed or wanted by a hostile townsfolk who were anti-UN and who supported Katanga’s bid for freedom. The troops, led by Commandant Pat Quinlan from Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry, dug in and fortified their position. They were celebrating mass when a sentry spotted an advancing military force and he fired a warning shot that signalled the start of five days intensive fighting. The attackers numbered between 3,000 to 5,000 and were made up of Katangese tribesmen, Belgian settlers and hardened European and African mercenaries who were well armed and even had air support at their disposal. Despite their superior strength and firepower, the first wave of attackers – and following waves – were held or driven back by the Irish soldiers who, despite having very little combat experience, were well trained and well led. The stiff resistance offered by the outnumbered and encircled Irish troopers is reported to have surprised many of the attackers, so much that they began to desert the battlefield. The response of mercenaries to try and restore their fighting force was to start shooting fleeing natives. In the face of repeated attacks, the Irish held their ground for five days until they ran out of ammunition, food and water supplies. An attempt to reinforce them with other UN troops was defeated before their back up could even get anywhere near them. One air drop did get water through to the men but it came in tanks that had been used to store petrol and had not been properly cleaned out, rendering the water inside undrinkable. Lacking clear orders and the manpower or equipment needed to defend themselves, Cmdt Quinlan made the decision to surrender. The siege of Jadotville was finally over. An estimated 300 men from the attacking force were killed in the battle while approximately another thousand were injured. There were plenty of injuries on the Irish side of the wire yet by some miracle, no deaths. The Irish men were held as prisoners of war for a month and used to try and force humiliating terms on the United Nations. Several weeks after their release, some of their number saw further fighting but this time they were supported by soldiers from Sweden and were successfully backed up by fellow Irish peacekeepers. There is much to say about Ireland’s contribution to the United Nations Peacekeeping efforts in the Congo – and every UN peacekeeping mission since – and we may well return to the subject for the September edition, which will mark the 60th anniversary of that incredible encounter. In the meantime, if you haven’t already seen it, the 2016 action war film The Siege of Jadotville offers a realistic and gripping account of those events and is well worth a watch.

Above left: Laurence Gorman. Above: On duty in the Congo during the Siege of Jadotville, and the Netflix movie made about the event (right)

THE WILD GEESE OF THE CONGO

As seen previously, throughout the Congo’s long and unhappy history there has been no shortage of men who were prepared to use violence and force to accomplish their goals at any cost. One name stands out amongst the countless numbers who fit into that category – Thomas ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare (below), an ‘Irish’ mercenary who was the ultimate walking, talking war machine. Hoare was born on St Patrick’s Day 1919 to Irish parents (Thomas and Aileen) – in Calcutta, India but got most of his education in England. At the age of 20 he joined the London Irish Rifles when WWII started. He would see action in Burma and India and by the end of the war he had risen to the rank of major. Not long after the war finished, he got married in New Delhi and the newly-weds had three children. He also went on to become an accountant, but that and life in London were dull and did not interest him, so he moved to South Africa where he ran safaris and became a soldier of fortune in various African conflicts. He would lead two different mercenary groups during the Congo Crisis. The first time was in 1961 when he was recruited by Moïse Tshombe, a powerful businessman and politician behind the succession of Katanga from the Congo. The breakaway government and its rebel forces were defeated in 1962 by the Congolese government with the support of the United Nations. Hoare lived to fight another day and in 1964 was again employed by Tshombe – who was by now prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – to quash the Simba rebellion, which was backed by Communist forces. Working with hundreds of other European mercenaries – including apparently some from Ireland – Hoare defeated the Simba rebels. Unlike other operators in what was normally a shadowy trade, Hoare welcomed and even enjoyed media attention and wasn’t afraid to give journalists a good line or

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story. Returning from the Congo to his home in South Africa, Hoare reportedly told a waiting journalist that “killing communists is like killing vermin, killing African nationalists is as if one is killing an animal. My men and I have killed between 5,000-10,000 Congo rebels in the 20 months that I have spent in the Congo. But that’s not enough. There are 20 million Congolese you know, and I assume that about half of them at one time or another were rebels whilst I was down here.” On another occasion he told a journalist that you can’t win a war with choirboys. Perhaps Hoare’s greatest publicity coup was the 1978 film The Wild Geese, which was based largely on his exploits and reputation. Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore were just some of the big names of the day in the star-studded action flick about a band of 50 battle scarred mercenaries paid good money to snatch a deposed president from the clutches of a new ruler in a power struggle (over mineral resources) in an African nation. The supposed three hour snatch-and-grab job becomes a prolonged battle for survival, as the mercenaries are betrayed and left to die by the same interests that hired them. An Irish missionary priest comes to their salvation by telling them where there is a plane they could use to escape the country and pursuing soldiers intent on killing them. The film’s title was borrowed from real life. In what would suggest a pride in his heritage, Hoare borrowed it from Irish history. The Flight of the Wild Geese saw the Irish Jacobite army, commanded by Patrick Sarsfield, forced to leave Ireland for Europe as a result of the 1691 Treaty of Limerick. The image of a flying goose was the symbol he used for his 5 Commando Group (above). Hoare died in South African in early February 2020, just as the global proportions of COVID-19 were starting to emerge.

A GLIMPSE OF THE CONGO TODAY

It is worth noting that at 2.345 million km², the land mass of the Democratic Republic of the Congo – Africa’s second largest country – is slightly smaller but roughly the same size as Western Australia (2.646 million km²). Despite the comparison of both being big mining states with abundant natural resources, the Congo is ranked in the top ten poorest nations in the world according to the Irish charity Trócaire, which operates there. “The DRC has vast amounts of oil, diamonds, gold and other natural resources like cobalt, which is used in making our smart phones. At the same time, 74% of this country of 84 million people live in poverty. Many people are affected by chronic hunger and the spread of diseases, like measles and ebola. Violence against women is widespread”.

Using public donations, Trócaire states that it provides lifesaving support such as food, water and shelter and long term projects to build resilient communities and to protect women who have survived violence. Left: Six year old Kampale washes his hands at a water tank provided by Trócaire to his school, to improve hygiene to halt the spread of diseases.

Photo : Garry Walsh / Trócaire