 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. 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. 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 condition and the posts at Bongandanga and Mompono recorded death rates of three to ten prisoners per day each in 1899. 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. 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.
