As I write this (on Saturday January 16) BBC 2 is screening THE NUN’S STORY, starring Audrey Hepburn, made in 1959. I remember seeing queues of women in O’Connell
Street waiting to watch it in the Metropole. It was set in the Belgian Congo, where over 50 years earlier Roger Casement had travelled and reported on the crimes of King Leopold’s agents.
Within a year of watching those queues I watched the funeral of the soldiers of our own Army in O’Connell St. killed in that “newly liberated” Republic, while serving as a peace-keeping force with the United Nations. The Dead March in Saul echoing off the buildings made an impression on me that I have never forgotten.
On January 17 1961 the Premier of the Congo, Patrice was murdered by Belgians, working in collusion with America’s CIA in the last days of the Eisenhower Presidency.
The Irish Troops had been airlifted from Dublin to the Congo by the US Air Force.
So today is the 60th Anniversary of Lumumba’s murder.
Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soele in 1999 claimed that he had helped exhume Lumumba’s body shortly after the murder, cut it up with hacksaws and dissolved it
in acid. He had kept a bullet and two of Lumumba’s (gold) teeth as souvenirs.
Late last year the King of the Belgians apologised for the crimes of King Leopold, but not the crimes of his successors. Perhaps he might do so now.
And in the last days of the Trump Presidency or the first days of Joe Biden’s one, may we expect an American apology for American crimes in the Congo??????????
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