Conan Doyle used his popularity, for which he was indebted primarily to the character Sherlock Holmes, to also take up journalistic and political positions. Much like his detective, he sometimes did so by investigating matters on his own or giving Scotland Yard advice. He also unsuccessfully ran for a seat in Parliament. Sometimes he was asked to appear in person in the hopes of drawing attention to a campaign. This was the case in regards to the protest against the atrocities committed in the Congo, which indeed was the first ever international human rights campaign. They are part of the terrible colonial history of Africa that took the lives of many millions of Congolese, estimates today being a minimum of five million, though probably there were as many as fifteen million victims. With his 1909 book, The Crime of the Congo, Conan Doyle took a public stance, sharply criticized Belgium, and labeled it “the greatest crime in all history.” His intervention occurred relatively late, as Leopold II, who was responsible for the atrocities, died in 1909. In 1900 the British journalist Edmund Dene Morel published a series of articles in the magazine Speaker that denounced the architects of the Belgian horrors, as well as calling for an open investigation into the crimes. Morel worked for an English shipping company which had a monopoly on business with the Congo, and he insisted that his business had nothing to do with the trading of goods. In Antwerp ships arrived with elephant tusks and rubber, but then they were loaded with weapons and munitions before returning to the Congo. Morel undertook massive amounts of research, had the chance to look at account books and exposed the perverse use of supposed philanthropy as outright exploitation. In 1903 Roger Casement, the British Consul in Boma, also investigated events in the Congo and one year later produced a report that corroborated Morel's accusations. Morel and Casement founded the Congo Reform Association and appealed to Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and Conan Doyle for support. Conrad had already taken up the exploitation of the Congo in Heart of Darkness, but declined to take a journalistic-political position, since he was only a “measly writer of novels.”