An Assassination's Long Shadow

[Lydia Leftcoast]

TODAY, millions of people on another continent are observing the 50th anniversary of an event few Americans remember, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. A slight, goateed man with black, half-framed glasses, the 35-year-old Lumumba was the first democratically chosen leader of the vast country, nearly as large as the United States east of the Mississippi, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This treasure house of natural resources had been a colony of Belgium, which for decades had made no plans for independence. But after clashes with Congolese nationalists, the Belgians hastily arranged the first national election in 1960, and in June of that year King Baudouin arrived to formally give the territory its freedom.

“It is now up to you, gentlemen,” he arrogantly told Congolese dignitaries, “to show that you are worthy of our confidence.”

The Belgians, and their European and American fellow investors, expected to continue collecting profits from Congo’s factories, plantations and lucrative mines, which produced diamonds, gold, uranium, copper and more. But they had not planned on Lumumba.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17hochschild.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp
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I do remember the assassination of Lumumba. I was a child at the time and had no reason to believe anything other than what the MSM told us: that Lumumba was a Communist.

As this article shows, the truth was much more complex, and we can add Congo to the list of countries (Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Japan*, Cambodia, most of Latin America) where the U.S. intervened and left a tragic legacy that none of these countries have overcome.

*It is not commonly known that the U.S. released right-wing war criminals from Japanese prisons during the Korean War and encouraged them to sic the yakuza gangsters on labor unions that objected to the Korean War. I suggest seeing the movie ANPO, made by an American who grew up bilingual in Japan, for the full story.