Ian Black, Brussels Thursday June 28, 2001 The Guardian
Britain backed Belgium and the US in their desire to eliminate Patrice Lumumba, the radical prime minister of Congo who was murdered in 1961, according to newly-discovered documents. Ludo de Witte, a Flemish historian, reveals that while the US and Belgium actively plotted to murder the African nationalist leader, the British government secretly believed that Lumumba posed a serious threat to western interests and wanted him "got rid of".
Within days of its independence in June 1960, Congo was in chaos, with army mutinies triggering Belgian military intervention, the secession of the copper-rich Katanga province and the arrival of UN troops.
On September 19 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower discussed the Congo crisis with Lord Home, the then foreign secretary. "The president expressed his wish that Lumumba would fall into a river full of crocodiles," a declassified US document records. "Lord Home said regretfully that we have lost many of the techniques of old-fashioned diplomacy."
The minutes suggest that the British government could have known of the CIA's plans to kill Lumumba, Mr De Witte says.
Just a week later, Eisenhower met the Conservative prime minister, Harold Macmillan, with the foreign secretary again in attendance.
"Lord Home raised the question why we are not getting rid of Lumumba," the US account of the talks reports. "He stressed that now is the time to get rid of Lumumba."
The Congolese leader's public denunciation of racism and exploitation under 80 years of colonial rule and his overtures to the Soviet Union in the midst of the cold war had made him powerful enemies.
His leftwing foreign policy threatened both Belgian and US interests. France had close links with Belgium, while Britain had substantial mining interests in Katanga.
At the end of September 1960, when Lumumba had already been dismissed by the Congo's president and the army commander moved to arrest him, Howard Smith, a senior Foreign Office official who was later to become the head of MI5, led a discussion recorded in a document released by the Public Record Office last year.
"I can see only two possible solutions to the problem," Mr Smith said. "The first is the simple one of ensuring Lumumba's removal from the scene by killing him. This should solve the problem..."
Although protected by UN soldiers, Lumumba was detained and handed over to his enemies in Katanga on January 17 1961, where he was executed by a firing squad commanded by a Belgian.
Mr De Witte's book caused an outcry when it was published two years ago and triggered the establishment of a commission of inquiry in the Belgian parliament, which is due to report by the autumn.
Its English edition, incorporating newly available documents about British links with the affair, is due to be published next month.
Revelations about "Operation Barracuda" - the Belgian code name for a plot to eliminate Lumumba - could be confirmed by the parliamentary inquiry. But it is not clear whether the Belgian government will be directly implicated in Lumumba's murder.
"Most of the witnesses are not telling the truth, or the full truth, and that is a problem," Geert Versnick, the chairman of the commission, said.
In fact Lumumba had been murdered by his own people, "the stakeknives", paid by foreign powers. The Arab world are suffering the same thing today, unfortunately, they use wrong methods to fight injustice and imperialism. Black people have to communicate more with each other in diaspora and with those in Africa in order to unmask those problems, without resorting to violence.
___________________ 1) Everything you can imagine is real->Picasso
2) They taught you the praises of their God, and these hosannas, when tuned into your sorrows, gave you the hope of a better world to come-->Patrice Lumumba Posts: 379 | Registered: Apr 2003
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