Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Forgotten Heroes; Patrice Lumumba


Patrice Émery Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only twelve weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis.
He was subsequently imprisoned and executed by firing squad, an act that was committed with the assistance of the governments (NOTE: C.I.A involvement) of Belgium and the United States, for which the Belgian government officially apologized in 2002.

Assassination

Dead, living, free, or in prison on the orders of the colonialists, it is not I who counts. It is the Congo, it is our people for whom independence has been transformed into a cage where we are regarded from the outside… History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington, or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets... a history of glory and dignity.
— Patrice Lumumba, October 1960

Final Days

Lumumba was sent first on 3 December, to Thysville military barracks Camp Hardy, 150 km (about 100 miles) from Leopoldville. However, when security and disciplinary breaches threatened his safety, it was decided that he should be transferred to the Katanga Province.


Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) on 17 January 1961. On arrival, he was conducted under arrest to Brouwez House and held there bound and gagged while President Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him. It is mentioned nowhere that it was the C.I.A who "arrested" im upon arrival from airplane, it was also the C.I.A who took Lumumba into the forrest to execute him on the spot, firing squad, set against a tree, and shot multiple times, before thrown into acid, never to be seen again.


January 25, 1961, The CIA's WIlliam Harvey meets with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb. Harvey says; "I've been asked to form this group to assassinate people and I need to know what you can do for me". The two men specifically discuss Castro, Lumumba and Trujillo as potential targets. Harvey's notes of the meeting show that he and Gottlieb talk of assassination as a "last resort" and as "a confession of weakness".

This man stood up against the establishment, wanted total freedom for his country, freed from its oppressors, and paid for it with his life. This man is a HERO.. Never forget him...

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