Word: belgians
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Returning to Léopoldville, Prime Minister Lumumba gratuitously added new fuel to the flames. He blamed the mutiny on Lieut. General Janssens, who, he said, had refused to accept proposals for the Africanization of the army; he blamed the scare about Soviet "invaders" on Belgian agents, and summoned the Belgian ambassador to make the fantastic charge that he had uncovered a Belgian plot to murder him. "The assassins were discovered and arrested in my residence," cried Lumumba. "They were armed to the teeth." Everything that was happening, Lumumba insisted, was a Belgian plot to discredit the Congolese government...
...mutiny, rape and chaos in the Congo poured into Brussels, Belgium's dapper Premier Gaston Eyskens at first shrugged it off with the remark: "These are the minor growing convulsions of a young nation." But as the first planeloads of refugees arrived from Brazzaville, thousands of former Belgian settlers demonstrated at the airport and nearly mobbed a Congolese politician who was on one of the planes. Shouting "A has les macaques! [Down with the apes!]," the settlers demanded army intervention in the Congo. So did Belgian newspapers, and La Libre Belgique cried: "It would be madness to worry...
...cars bearing panicky Europeans streamed eastward to the North Rhodesian border; 3,000 crossed in a single night, and Salisbury hotel lobbies were packed with women comforting whimpering children. The U.S., British and French consuls in Elisabethville called for help. Three hundred paratroopers were rushed by air from the Belgian airbase at Kamina, and for the first time the Congolese mutineers were engaged in battle by white troops. The paratroopers stormed the Elisabethville barracks and routed the mutinous Congolese troops, with some 100 dead...
...desperate effort to regain control of the Force Publique, President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba promoted a former regimental sergeant major named Victor Lundula to full general and made him commander of the Congolese army. A Belgian colonel in Léopoldville did what he could to help by going on the radio to order all white officers and noncoms to hand in their weapons, since General Lundula was now in command. The troops, he added, would be allowed to choose the white officers they wanted to stay on as technicians; those they did not like would have to leave...
...week's end the Belgian government decided upon armed intervention to rescue and evacuate its citizens in the Congo, who are estimated to number 80,000. Two Belgian officials left Brussels for Léopoldville to put an ultimatum to Lumumba. He was given the choice of inviting Belgian troops to restore order. Should he refuse, the Belgians would intervene on their own initiative. As the Belgian plane took off, the paratroop reservists were assembled at collection points, ready for immediate departure, and army planes warmed up at Belgian airfields to begin the airlift. Either the Congolese government would...