With shame, a half-century later. On Jan. 17, as we observed the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, very few Ameri- cans noticed the 50th anniversary of another event related to a great black leader, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.
Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast African country , the treasure house of natural resources, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which had been a colony of Belgium. Colonial powers first underestimated the anti-colonial sentiment on the African continent and then reacted violently: between 1961 and 1973, six African independ- ence leaders were assassinated by their ex-colonial rulers, including Patrice Lumumba of Congo.
Although MLK Jr. and Lumumba were rather unalike personalities, they share the same brutal end: both were assassinated for political reasons, both shed the blood on American hands.
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January 17, 2011 Today is a glorious day of remembrance in Global Black History, celebrating the lives of those who showed us how to live with our heads high as kings & queens. Today we celebrate drum majors that changed the world perspective of the great- ness of our Global Blackness. Today we cele- brate the birth of Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.; Jan 17, 1942) & First Lady of the United States of America Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born Jan 17, 1964). Today we celebrate the life, lessons, martyrdom, death, greatness & honor of two of the greatest Global Pan-African leaders of all time: Patrice Émery Lumumba (killed Jan 17, 1961) & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Jan 15, 1929). Global Fusion at www.globalfusion.cc |
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In February 2002, the Belgian government apologized to the Congolese people, and admitted to a "moral responsibility" and "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba". Unlike Belgium, the United States has admitted no such moral responsibility. In July, US government revealed the documents indicating no direct involvement in the actual murder. Hooray! Hooray for the American democracy. But then again, not so much. Lumumba was mistakenly seen by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower as another communist threat, an African Fidel Castro. CIA chief Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as "an urgent and prime objective" (Dulles' own words) and dispatched an undercover agent with poison. The would-be poisoners could not get close enough to Lumumba to do the job, so instead the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested the prime minister. On Jan. 17, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, he was shot. As for the CIA statement of "no direct involvement", a CIA officer told another CIA officer later that he had Lumumba's body in the trunk of his car to try to find a way to dispose of it.
The US was the first country from which Lumumba requested help. Lumumba not only denied being a Communist but said he found colonialism and Communism to be equally deplorable, and professed his personal preference for neutrality between the East and West. Says Adam Hochschild in An Assassination’s Long Shadow (NY Times, Jan. 16, 2011): " A half-century later, we should surely look back on the death of Lumumba with shame, for we helped install the men who deposed and killed him. Some of that blood is on our hands."
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