Sometimes it is hard to accept why and how a human will commit atrocities against his fellow humankind. If indeed there is a real devil, it might all fall on human beings. Humans have perpetuated a lot of serious crimes against mankind or humanity than any of the creations created on this earth.
These haunting images depict a dark and disturbing period in colonial history when thousands of people were brought to the United States and Europe, imprisoned, and placed into what were essentially human zoos. Many people died during these exhibitions. Now let the images speak for themselves.
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An African girl during the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels |
Throughout history, there is a trace of erasing or destroying a native culture wherever the Europeans go. Thus Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and every part of the world where Europeans have been. The slave trade resulted in many Africans being exported to other continents while thousands of them died through horrific practices and torture as well as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
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| Ota Benga and Chimpanzee, Bronx zoo 1906 |
A group of Philippines at New York Conney Island World Fair, 1905
On the contrary, not only blacks or Africans have subsequently suffered such inhuman atrocities but Europeans, Americans, and Asians as well as other races. Not forgetting how the Jews were slaughtered by Adolf Hitler, how the Aborigines were decimated by the British, how the native Indians were wiped out by the Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italians and etc. The list goes on and on and on.
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| A child at the World Fair in Chicago, 1891 |
With the exception of the above-mentioned atrocities carried out by the so-called countries that have now instituted Human Right Laws, human Zoos were the second crime committed by the Europeans or the colonizers. Humans were put in zoos across Europe and the Americas for the sake of amusement. The first colonial human zoo exhibition was held in Berlin, Germany.
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| Native Indians were used as an attraction at St. Louis World Fair 1904 |
The so-called World Fairs organized by the Europeans killed a lot of indigenous people termed by the Europeans and the Christians as savages. Who is the savage here? These World Fairs mostly exhibit humans in a zoo called ' Human Zoo'. Where people come and pay to watch humankind placed in dirty and desolate places with exotic costumes for someone's happiness. Children were even not spared in this crime. These humans were subjected to public humiliation and racial prejudice.
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| A Congolese Pygmies dancing in front of the Palace of Manufactures St. Louis, 1904 |
In the zoo, spectators would throw food or other items at the humans to eat just like they do nowadays to animals in the zoo. Some of the humans in the zoo were fed raw meat and food that are not appropriate for them. A lot of the children in these human zoos felt sick and died while some of them suffered malnutrition because of a lack of healthy foods.
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| women, men, and children housed in Belgium for World Fair, 1897 |
The majority of the humans kept in the zoos also suffered from other cardiovascular and orthopedic diseases since they were exposed to cold weather and inappropriate place of sleep or abode. In Germany, there was a Humbug-based animal trader called Carl Haggenbeck who later turned his zoo into a human zoo. Sartjie Baartman was placed on display as a living and breathing exhibit at the London Piccadilly circus as an attraction for the public because of her enormous buttocks.
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| Sarjie Bartman in British Museum |
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