Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese independence leader and first democratically elected Prime Minister, was executed 55 years ago on 17th January, 1961. He had been beated and tortured in a culmination of two assassination plots by the Belgian government and the CIA, ordered directly by President Dwight Eisenhower to ‘eliminate’ the charismatic leader, with the cooperation of British intelligence and Katangan authorities. 

Just months before his deposition in a coup, Lumumba had delivered a powerful speech declaring the independence of the Republic of Congo and speaking eloquently about the struggle against racism and colonization, “an indispensable struggle to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed on us by force.”

 


http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/21/a-revolutionary-speech-patrice-lumumba-and-the-birth-of-the-republic-of-congo/