PREVIEW
It’s taken over sixty years for the Belgian courts to address the country’s role in the Congo crisis
On 17 March the Brussels Court of First Instance is to decide whether former Belgian diplomat Étienne Davignon will face trial before the Brussels Criminal Court charged with involvement in the abduction and transfer that led to the murder of Congo-Kinshasa's first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba (AC Vol 38 No 19, Kabila takes on the UN). For Congolese coming to age in the post-colonial era, the trial could have a powerful symbolism and may help Belgium’s difficult relations with Kinshasa.
A diplomat and politician, who served two terms as a European Commissioner before embarking on a lucrative business career, Count Davignon, who is now 93 years old, was an aide to Belgian Foreign Minister Paul-Henri Spaak when Kinshasa obtained independence from Belgium. He was then posted to Kinshasa in the early 1960s and was responsible for a telegram to Brussels in September 1960 stating that it was a ‘primordial problem to remove Lumumba and achieve unity of the Congolese leaders against him’.
A 2001 Belgian parliamentary inquiry found that Davignon was ‘tasked with convincing then-Congolese President Joseph Kasa Vubu to dismiss Lumumba [as prime minister] and providing him with the necessary legal arguments’.
Though then Prime Minister Alexander De Croo stated in 2022 that Belgium recognised its ‘moral responsibility’ for Lumumba’s assassination in January 1961 at the hands of firing squads overseen by Belgian officers, the precise involvement of the Belgian state, and of the sitting monarch, King Baudouin, has been shrouded in secrecy (AC Vol 65 No 24, The price of sainthood).
François Lumumba, the eldest son of Patrice Lumumba, who was the first elected Prime Minister post-independence, filed a criminal complaint before the Brussels court 15 years ago against 11 Belgian nationals that he said were involved in Lumumba’s assassination.
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