标题: 【历史】 [打印本页] 作者: nashhan 时间: 2010-8-7 16:50 标题: 【历史】 Each post maintained a census of all the males from the nearby villages to implement the tax which was initially set at 4 kg of dry rubber (8 kg of wet rubber) per man per fortnight.[11] Each post had a force of 65–100 "village sentries", often ex-slaves armed with muzzle loading rifles, which resided in the villages to enforce taxation.[6] The sentries were kept at the expense of the villagers and often used flogging, imprisonment or execution to keep production up.
Sentries who failed to enforce the quota or made mistakes could be fined up to half their salary or fired, imprisoned or flogged.[6] In addition to the village sentries were "post sentries" who were 25–80 men armed with modern, breech-loading Albini rifles who lived on the post and were used to punish villages and suppress rebellions.[13] Sentries were paid similar wages to the post workmen and despite the strict working conditions it was a popular job as it offered a position of power over the other villagers.[6] The sentries had their choice of food, women and luxury items and many left after a one year term with five or six wives which they then sold.[6]
In order to comply with Congo law the company had to pay the villagers for bringing them rubber, these payments were often made in goods. Roger Casement, the British Consul in the Free State, recorded payments of a nine inch knife of 1.25 fr value for a full basket of rubber, a five inch knife worth 0.75 fr for a less full basket and beads worth 0.25 fr for a smaller amount of rubber.[14] Yet the main incentive for villagers to bring rubber was not the small payments but the fear of punishment. If a man did not fulfil his quota his family may have been taken hostage by ABIR and released only when the quota was filled.
The man himself was not imprisoned as that would prevent him from collecting rubber.[14] Later agents would simply imprison the chief of any village which fell behind its quota, in July 1902 one post recorded that it held 44 chiefs in prison. These prisons were in a poor codition and the posts at Bongandanga and Mompono recorded death rates of three to ten prisoners per day each in 1899.[14] Those with records of resisting the company were deported to forced labour camps. There were at least three of these camps, one at Lireko, one on the Upper Maringa River and one on the Upper Lopori River.[14]
In addition to imprisonment corporal punishment was also used against tax resisters with floggings of up to 200 lashes with a chicotte, a hippopotamus hide whip, being reported. Some agents would tie men to platforms facing the sun or burn them with gum from the copal tree as a means of punishment.[14]