Word: belgians
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While a ghostly Stanleyville was gradually secured by the government troops, hundreds of white hostages still remained in rebel hands elsewhere. Two days after the Stanleyville drop, the Belgian paras jumped again, this time at Paulis, northeast of Stanleyville, where 270 whites were being kept prisoners...
...rebels, drunk and high on hemp, chose their victims for the night. Jean de Gotte, Belgian honorary consul in Paulis, watched in horror: "The first dozen were bound, hands and feet tied together behind their backs-trussed like chickens. They were taken outside and dumped on the sidewalk. Five white fathers were stripped of their cassocks and their beards were cut off. Mr. Tucker was first. They hit him across the face with a beer bottle and blinded him. Then they beat him slowly, down the spine, with rifle butts and sticks. Every time he squirmed they...
...last plane, which waited with its engines whining impatiently. They took off in a hail of mercifully inaccurate rebel fire. Aboard one of the planes flew Mrs. Angeline Tucker and her three children. She had not seen her husband die. After that, to the disgust of U.S. and Belgian officials on the scene, the paratroopers were withdrawn, presumably in deference to "world opinion," even though an estimated 1,100 whites were still in rebel-held territory...
...month after the rebels took Stanleyville, two scruffy Simbas in a purloined truck captured the area. The rebels were underestimated by the whites who chose to remain-missionaries, officials, technicians, businessmen, employees of the Belgian-owned Societe Generate, which controls most of the Congo's business enterprises and is still making money...
Some Europeans played into rebel hands-for instance, the Belgian owner of a sugar mill who felt it was better to deal with the people in power than lose his sugar crop: from neighboring Burundi he continued to bring in supplies and gasoline, which the rebels regularly confiscated, thus gaining enough fuel to attack Albertville...