DR Congo honors Lumumba 60 years after his assassination

The Democratic Republic of the Congo honored independence hero Patrice Lumumba on Sunday, marking the 60th anniversary of his assassination in a plot linked to the colonial master of the young nation, Belgium.

President Félix Tshisekedi paid tribute to the charismatic politician at a site in the capital Kinshasa where a memorial is to be installed in his honor.

However, Lumumba’s body will never be found. Shot down by firing squad by Katangese separatists and Belgian mercenaries on January 17, 1961, in southeastern Congo during the chaotic first months of independence, his body was dissolved in acid.

The only part of his body ever to be found was a tooth seized from a Belgian policeman who, on his own, took it while helping to dispose of the body.

Last month, Tshisekedi said Belgium would return the teeth to his family in time for the independence anniversary celebrations on June 30.

Juliana Lumumba, the daughter of the murdered leader, wrote to Belgium’s King Philippe last year, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, asking for his return.

The eminent Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, also paid tribute to Lumumba, calling him “one of the greatest heroes in history”.

Lumumba was a “man of determination who fought to the end for the freedom, the sovereignty of the #RDC,” he wrote on Twitter. “A model of courage for young people.”

Lumumba was ousted from his post as prime minister soon after independence, then delivered to death in the hands of Katangese separatists and mercenaries.

In 2001, a Belgian parliamentary commission recognized that the country was “morally responsible” for his death. In 2012, a Brussels court of appeal went further, calling his murder a war crime.

An investigation in Belgium for war crimes is in its final phase, according to lawyer Christophe Marchand, who filed a complaint in 2011 on behalf of François Lumumba, son of the murdered leader.

“It was the Belgians who planned and carried out Lumumba’s death,” said Congolese historian Guillaume Nkongolo, referring to the recently opened archives.