https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_S...
Begium was brutal in the Congo. Their brutality continued all the way to the mid 20th century, when Belgium (with US help) tortured, murdered, dismembered, and dissolved in acid, the body of the recently independent Congo's prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Belgian police commissioner, Gerard Soete who participated in the dismemberment kept two teeth and two fingers from Lumumba as souvenirs. The single tooth, that could still be found, was repatriated last year, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a state funeral was held.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61838781
Belgium's motivation was to continue to steal everything they could from the Congo. The US motivation was specifically to steal the Congo's uranium which was used to produce US nuclear weapons starting from the Manahattan project through the 1950s.
Even Gilley, the author of your post, acknowledged that hands were cut off of the dead in order to account for the ammunition used, though he emphasizes that the practice predated the establishment of the Congo Free State. That's also a claim that Hochschild makes in the book itself:
> Although some Congo peoples, like the Pygmies, were admirably peaceful, it would be a mistake to see most of them as paragons of primeval innocence. Many practiced slavery and a few ritual cannibalism, and they were as likely to make war on other clans or ethnic groups as people anywhere on earth. *And traditional warfare in this part of Africa, where a severed head or hand was sometimes proof of an enemy killed in battle, was as harsh as warfare elsewhere.* In the far northern Congo some women were maimed, as still happens today, by forced clitoridectomies, a practice no less brutal for being a cultural initiation rite.
One doesn't preclude the other. Beyond that, there's a great deal of historical evidence that supports the use of severed hands to account for ammunition used, and also evidence that severing the hands of the living was not unknown. There are diary entries from missionaries, photographic proof from multiple photographers, and more.
As Hochschild points out in his response[0] to Gilley, "the regime's own Manuel du Voyageur et du Résident au Congo, has detailed instructions for state officials about how to take hostages." The sheer amount of documentary evidence of atrocities in the Belgian Congo is quite clear. We also have diary entries and written reports from some of the perpetrators themselves, including Charles Lemaire, whose quotation Gilley took issue with.
If you really want to talk about "manipulative and deceptive" narratives "driven by a certain political agenda," you probably shouldn't be quoting Bruce Gilley. His reputation for his rather flawed defenses of colonialism, the most famous of which[1] was fiercely criticized even by fellow conservative academics.[3] And while some of the response to that article could be labeled as more emotional than about his specific claims and practices, plenty of ink has been spilled criticizing his arguments. Gilley is quite explicit in his defense of colonialism and his arguments for the return of a neo-colonialism today. For those arguments to hold any sway, he pretty much has to find a way to explain away colonialism's sordid history of atrocities and exploitation. At the very least, extraordinary claims such as Gilley's require exceptional documentation he has not provided.
0. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-ghost-still-haun...
1. https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/the_case_for_col...
2. https://www.cato.org/commentary/case-against-case-colonialis...