Word: belgians
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...organized by President Joseph Mobutu's Mouvement Populaire Revolutionnaire, the only legal political party in the Congo. Outside the Belgian embassy in Kinshasa, it began to work up quite a head of steam for its "spontaneous anti-imperialist demonstration." Primary object was to protest the seven-week-old rebellion of the Congo's white mercenaries, who were fired by Mobutu and subsequently captured the border city of Bukavu by force. Loudspeaker trucks promised immediate satisfaction to all loyal Congolese right there in Kinshasa. Before the shouting was over, announced the sound trucks, the Belgian, French and British ambassadors...
...thugs from the party's far-left Jeunesse (youth) movement, some 2,000 Congolese stormed and sacked two floors of the Belgian embassy, invaded an adjacent apartment building and mauled an American Army sergeant and his wife who were trapped inside. Then it moved on to hurl rocks at the French cultural center and the American and British embassies, loot shops and set fire to cars along the way. Before Mobutu decided that it was time for him to ask the rioters to go home, they had torn down a 35-ft.-high bronze statue of Belgium...
Despite the economic ruin that would follow a massive Belgian withdrawal, Mobutu was anything but contrite. He denied personal responsibility for the rioting, insisted that all well-meaning whites were perfectly safe in his country. If there was any anti-Belgian hysteria, he said, it was all to be blamed on the mercenaries sitting boldly in Bukavu and issuing ultimatums calling for the return of Moise Tshombe...
...anything but defeat. The "meres," after all, number only 160 men, backed up by 1,500 or so dissident Katangese troops, while President Joseph Mobutu's Congolese National Army is 30,000 strong. Moreover, the rebel commander, Major Jean Schramme, is not a soldier; he is a Belgian plantation owner who has lived in the Congo for 23 of his 36 years. But last week it was "Black Jack" Schramme and his mercenaries who held the upper hand...
Emerging from their stronghold in the plantation country near Punia, Schramme and his men began a march on the border city of Bukavu, once a resort for rich Belgian colonials. They met little resistance. Warned by jungle telegraph that the mercenaries were approaching, the defenders of Bukavu threw away their arms, commandeered civilian clothes, and fled across the Ruzizi River into Rwanda...