麻豆社

Juliana Lumumba, daughter of assassinated Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, recalls the moment she heard that a Belgian police commissioner had kept a tooth from her father after he was assassinated in 1961.

Lumumba became the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was also revered across the continent as a leading voice of African liberation. He was shot dead by a firing squad in 1961 and his body was later dissolved in acid. Years later a Belgian police commissioner admitted to being involved in Lumumba's demise and keeping the gold-crowned tooth, it seems, as a 'trophy'.

As Belgian authorities organised a ceremony in Brussels to return the tooth to Lumumba's surviving children, his daughter finds it hard to understand why the body part was taken in the first place, and describes it as "a crime against humanity".

Photo: Juliana Lumumba. Credit: EPA.