Belgium is responsible for not one, but two major political murders in Africa in the 1960s, concludes a Belgian researcher. Belgium also had a part in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Burundi, according to Ludo De Witte.
He has already revealed his country’s involvement in the liquidation of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba in January 1961.
Congo and Burundi were colonies of Belgium, but in the early sixties chose prime ministers who wanted to separate the countries from their colonizer. That was far too fast for Belgium. The Burundian Prime Minister Louis Rwagasore also had to pay with his death in October 1961, says De Witte after New Archive research. The highest official of the colonial administration gave political opponents of Rwagasore-front men of Belgium – the green light for the murder, de Witte wrote from Conversation reports. Resident Robert Regnier said that the prime minister should be eliminated and promised Rwagasore’s enemies that they would get away with it. According to the researcher, the perpetrators acted so carelessly that they seemed to count on it.
Belgium acknowledged responsibility for Lumumba’s death in 2002 and apologized.
