The Guardian
Jason Burke Africa correspondent
Mon 20 Jun 2022 05.54 EDT


Belgium returns Patrice Lumumba’s tooth to family 61 years after his murder
Congolese independence hero’s gold-capped tooth handed over as ex-colonial power faces its bloody past


Mon 20 Jun 2022 05.54 EDT
Belgian authorities have returned a tooth of the murdered Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba to his children, in a new move towards recognition of atrocities that accompanied the country’s brutal exploitation of the former colony.

The relic is all that remains of Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), under its earlier name the Republic of Congo, and an icon of the struggle against colonialism in Africa, who was murdered by separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961. His killers dissolved his remains in acid, though some kept his teeth as macabre mementoes.

The gold-capped tooth was handed in a light blue case to a group of family members at the Egmont Palace in Brussels on Monday morning. It was placed in a casket that will be taken to the embassy of the DRC, as a first step before repatriation.

Lumumba’s son Roland said last week that the return of the tooth meant his family would be able to “finish their mourning”.

By returning the tooth, Belgium is hoping to draw a line under one of the most brutal and shameful episodes in the country’s bloody exploitation of central Africa.

Alexander de Croo, the Belgian prime minister, recognised its “moral responsibility” for Lumumba’s killing. “This is a painful and disagreeable truth, but must be spoken,” De Croo said. “A man was murdered for his political convictions, his words, his ideals.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/20/belgium-returns-patrice-lumumba-tooth-congolese-independence

NBC News
June 20, 2022, 2:43 AM EDT / Updated June 20, 2022, 5:22 AM EDT
Slain Congolese icon’s tooth returned to family decades after killing
The existence of Patrice Lumumba’s tooth came to light in a 1999 interview with a former Belgian police commissioner who admitted to taking it as a “trophy.”

By Helena Skinner and Yuliya Talmazan
A tooth believed to have been ripped from a man who once carried a nation’s hopes of freedom and democracy is finally going home.

The symbolic handover of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba’s remains is meant to soothe a family’s and a country’s historic pain, but it is also reviving memories of European colonialism and America’s covert war to contain communism.

The return of what is widely believed to be Lumumba’s tooth means his family can finally have a “resting place where they can pray for their father,” said Brussels lawyer Christophe Marchand, who represents two of Lumumba’s five children, Francois and Roland. Without the remains, they can’t fully mourn, he said.

A Belgian official handed a blue box containing the tooth to members of his family at an official ceremony at Egmont Palace in the Belgian capital on Monday.

Following its handover to the family, Lumumba’s tooth will return to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although exact details are unclear, a homecoming tour is expected to take the relic to Lumumba’s home village, ending with an official burial in the capital, Kinshasa.

African sovereignty
The Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

To many Congolese, Lumumba is a national hero and a “standard bearer of the Congolese independence movement,” said Nzongola-Ntalaja, who has written extensively about Lumumba’s rise.

[at] The height of the Cold War, Lumumba was also perceived as a Soviet sympathizer, alarming the U.S. and its Western allies.

Ousted by a Western-backed coup three months after he took office, Lumumba was abducted, tortured and assassinated in 1961 at the age of 35. His body was then dug up, dismembered and dissolved in acid by Belgian officers, one of whom said he pocketed a tooth as a “trophy.”

Thus Lumumba’s family and his country were deprived of a burial and a grave.

Lumumba’s assassination remains part of the “national trauma” for the Congolese, Nzongola-Ntalaja said, and it has had far-reaching effects on the nation. The new Congolese democracy unraveled in its wake, shaking the country the size of Western Europe.

Although Belgium-backed Congolese separatists executed Lumumba in January 1961, an inquiry by the Belgian Parliament 40 years later established that certain members of the Belgium state at the time were “morally responsible” for the circumstances leading to his death. The prime minister at the time, Guy Verhofstadt, apologized in 2002 for Belgian involvement in Lumumba’s death.

Lumumba’s son Francois launched a separate inquiry into his death in Belgium in 2011, seeking to prosecute 10 Belgians for their connection to his father’s murder. It remains ongoing, with only two of the accused still alive.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/tooth-patrice-lumumba-congo-independence-returned-familly-belgium-rcna33270