red. on Nostr: https://void.cat/d/5RxZ3st43tmCNr58qfSD1s.webp Did you know that the CIA once ...
Did you know that the CIA once organized Patrice Lumumba to be executed by a firing squad? On this day in 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of Congo, was executed by a firing squad following assassination plots hatched by the US and Belgian governments.
Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected leader, was born in 1925 in the village of Onalua in Belgian-occupied Congo. The revolutionary Pan-African challenged the colonial status quo, making himself the mortal enemy of the global North.
After Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960, Lumumba became the country’s first prime minister. 60 years of Belgian rule in Congo was filled with terror and genocide, leaving up to 15 million people dead and plundering the country’s wealth.
The US was an early ally of tyranny in Congo. The 1884 Berlin Congress granted Belgian King Leopold II colonial control and private ownership of the entire 2,600,000 square km Congo Basin region. The US had already recognized his claim to the territory months before the conference.
Congo’s immense natural wealth, including uranium, became strategically crucial for US global hegemony and its nuclear weapons program. The US acquired its immense natural wealth and uranium to build the atomic bombs it dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
When Lumumba became Prime Minister in June 1960, he promised to break with imperialism and championed pan-African solidarity. Lumumba’s rise to power threatened US corporate interests and triggered Cold War paranoia.
A cable from CIA director Allen Dulles on August 25, 1960, read, “We are faced with a person who is a Castro or worse.” He subsequently ordered the CIA station chief in Congo: “Lumumba’s removal must be an urgent and prime objective... and a high priority of our covert action.”
The US and Belgium supported rival politicians, leading to Lumumba’s kidnapping and assassination by Colonel Joseph Mobutu’s forces. Mobutu’s rule, backed by the US and Europe, solidified the neo-colonial grip on the country.
During three decades of bloody rule under the US and European-backed Mobutu, the dictator came to control over 20% of the DRC’s assets, and his wealth ballooned to $5 billion, equal to the country’s external debt.
Today, the consequences of Lumumba’s murder are still felt in the DRC. The country has approximately $24 trillion in raw minerals, including almost half the world’s known cobalt reserves, found in batteries of nearly every standard electronic device, from phones to electric cars.
While multinational corporations continue to plunder the wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country is one of the five poorest countries in the world, with some 60 million people living on less than $1.90 a day.
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