17 January 1961
The date marks the death of Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo. His government was destabilized with the help of Belgians, Americans, and the UN. According to many reports, President Eisenhower actually ordered the CIA to assassinate the leader of an autonomous government. Even without the direct order, the United States collaborated with Joseph Mobutu to overthrow the Congolese government and install the scurrilous Mobutu as its leader.
Lumumba’s supposed crime was aligning with the Russians. He begged the UN and the US for help in restoring order to the beleaguered Congo. When they refused, he said that he would have to turn to the USSR without their help. They still refused, and proceeded to brand him as a Communist.
Patrice Lumumba was tortured, beaten, and eventually shot at the ambivalence (if not the bequest) of the United States. In his place, Joseph Mobutu created a dictatorship that lasted 32 years and plunged the resource-rich Congo into economic despair and its citizens into misery, starvation, and fear. While the citizens of the Congo scrambled to find food, Mobutu built himself a castle with an actual moat and ran his newly-invented air conditioners 24 hours a day so the gold on his chandeliers wouldn’t flake off in the Congo heat.
I just finished watching Lumumba, an HBO distributed film about the perilous 10 weeks of Lumumba’s government. It’s rather fractured and requires the watcher to have a pretty solid background in Congolese history just to follow it. During one scene, an American is asked to add his vote to those requesting Lumumba’s death. Amazingly, the name was bleeped out. Turns out, the American in the film is former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. He denies being associated with the assassination, but most reports link Carlucci, U.S. Ambassador Clare Timberlake, and CIA Chief Lawrence Devlin as having at least some input in the affair.
Incredibly, though public documents exist that link the United States with the overthrow of the Congolese government and its murderous fallout, not to mention the 32 years of horrific conditions in the fractured country, there is still enough clout to bleep the name of a man that any Google search will tell you was involved.
The Democratic Republic of Congo held elections last week. The people of the Congo have, for the first time since they elected Lumumba, a chance to have their voices heard and their votes counted. One can only hope that, this time, the Western world, with its love of democracy, will keep its meddlesome hands in its too deep pockets.
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