The documentary entitled “Lumumba, the return of a hero”, directed by Benoît Feyt, Dieudo Hamadi and Quentin Noirfalisse, will be screened in preview on Thursday June 8 in the municipality of Ixelles, in Brussels, Belgium. This 1 hour and 26 minute film traces the celebrations that marked the return of the remains of Patrice Lumumba, national hero of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Prime Minister of the country. The objective of the directors is to discover what remains of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and in Belgium.
This move is part of the extension of the official ceremony that Belgium organized in honor of the Congolese hero of independence, Patrice Lumumba, assassinated in 1961. His body had been dissolved in acid and only a tooth had survived. It took several decades to discover in 2016 that human remains had been kept in Belgium. The former Belgian policeman Gérard Soete had actively participated in the elimination of Patrice Emery Lumumba and boasted about it in the media.
The documentary also questions the circumstances and the veracity of the information communicated on the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and his two collaborators Okito and Mpolo. Indeed, a parliamentary commission of inquiry had concluded that the Belgian government had paid little attention to the physical integrity of Patrice Lumumba and that after his assassination, this same government had deliberately spread lies about the circumstances of his death.
Lumumba was born on July 2, 1925 in Onalua, in what is now Sankuru province in central DRC. Coming from a modest family, he received a solid Christian education allowing him to forge a strong personality that will be useful to him later. His murder has gone unpunished to this day.