This ceremony comes after a trip from King Philippe in the DRC, during which he repeated his “deeper regrets” for the “injuries” of the colonial period.
Le Monde
Belgium restores Monday, June 20 to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a tooth of Patrice Lumumba on Monday, June 20, which should allow the Congolese to be offered a place dedicated to the memory of their ex-Prime Minister , tortured then shot in 1961.
This assassination, followed by the elimination of the body, dismembered and dissolved in acid, constitutes one of the darkest pages of the relationship between Belgium and its former colony, which has become independent on June 30, 1960. The subject of a judicial investigation in Brussels for “war crime” after the complaint filed in 2011 by François Lumumba, the eldest son of the murdered leader, who pointed to the responsibilities of a dozen Belgian officials and diplomats.
The tooth is returned within the framework of this procedure. The file was thickened in 2016 with a complaint for “concealment”, relatives seeing the only way to grasp this human rest by justice. The tooth had been kept as a memory by a Belgian policeman who participated in the disappearance of the body and who had boasted in the media.
Monday morning, honoring his 2020 commitment, the federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw was to give the children of Patrice Lumumba “the setting containing the tooth” attributed to their father during a “private” ceremony scheduled for 10 am. The case will be placed in a coffin during a “beer” programmed this time in the presence of the Belgian and Congolese Prime Ministers, still at the Palais d’Egmont, in Brussels, according to the official program.
Speeches must then be pronounced before the coffin, before the national hymns of the two countries resonate. At the end of the ceremony, the body will be transported to the DRC embassy. She is expected to fly to Kinshasa Tuesday evening after a tribute from the Afrodescendant community in Brussels. 2> a memorial under construction in Kinshasa
hero of independence become Prime Minister of the former Belgian Congo (the former Zaire, today the DRC), Patrice Lumumba was overthrown in September 1960 by a coup. It was executed on January 17, 1961 with two brothers in arms by separatists from the Katanga region, with the support of Belgian mercenaries.
Perceived as prosoviets by Washington in the middle of the Cold War, considered a threat to Western economic interests in the Congo, he acquired after his death the stature of an African champion of anti-imperialism. “Lumumba became in no time a martyr of decolonization, a hero for all the oppressed of the earth,” summed up David Van Reybrouck in his book Congo, a story.
For his family, he remained a father or a grandfather to whom it was not possible to say goodbye. “The years go by and our father remains a death without funeral oration”, wrote in 2020 his daughter Juliana in a letter to the king of the Belgians, Philippe, claiming “the right return of relics”.
The restitution must allow loved ones to complete their mourning and the Congolese power to erect a memorial under construction in Kinshasa, on a large axis where a statue of the national hero already stands. From Congolese source, an burial ceremony must be organized there on June 30, the anniversary of independence. Throughout the previous week, the coffin will have marked stops on the emblematic places of the personal and political journey of the former leader.
“New pivotal moment” in the bilateral relationship, according to Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander de Croo, the restitution comes just after a six -day trip to King Philippe in the DRC, in early June – his first trip to the ex- Colony -, during which he reiterated his “deeper regrets” for the “wounds” of the colonial period. Monday morning, before the restitution ceremony, Philippe must have had an interview with Lumumba children at the Royal Palace. A strong meeting in symbols for the descendant of King Leopold II, whose monarchy now admitted that he had instituted at the end of the 19th century in the Congo “a regime marked by paternalism, discrimination and racism “.