Evo Morales Remembers Congolese Revolutionary Patrice Lumumba

Bolivia's former President Evo Morales (2006-2019) Sunday reminisced on the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba who was murdered by Katanga region's separatists and Belgian mercenaries on 17 January 1961.

RELATED: 

The African Union Reserves 270 Million COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

"On a day like today in 1961, Congolese leader Patricio Lumumba, who fought for the liberation and independence of his people, was tortured and killed. Our homage to this martyr of the African anti-colonialist movement," Morales tweeted.

"After Lumumba's assassination, the Congo lived 32 years of dictatorship, torture, massacres, and the plundering of its natural resources," he added. 

Lumumba was born on July 2, 1925, in Onalua in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He was an anti-colonialist leader and the first to hold the post of DRC Prime Minister between June and September 1960. 

Founder of the Congolese National Movement (CNM) to promote an independent and secular state, he was overthrown by a coup in September 1960.

Although there are different versions of the events that led to his death, he was cowardly assassinated by troops under Joseph-Desire Mobutu's mandate. 

In November 2001, the Belgian parliament recognized the responsibility of its state in the murder of Lumumba and the participation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

"No brutality, mistreatment or torture has broken me because I prefer to die with my head held high, with unshakable faith and deep trust in the future of my country, than to live in submission and trampling on sacred principles," Lumumba wrote to his wife and children days before his death.