Workers World, Vol. 3 No. 22
The unprecedented hue and cry by the kept press of world imperialism against the so-called murder of 13 Italian soldiers of the UN, by units of the Congolese army, reveals that the ruling class can sink to even lower levels of cynicism than it did when it “deplored” the murder of Patrice Lumumba. It is barely two weeks since the Paris police killed more than fifty Algerians on the streets of Paris, arrested thirteen thousand and deported many thousands in a manner so brutal that it actually put the methods of Goebbels and Himmler into the shade.
Was there a loud outburst of condemnation against this savage treatment of a colonial people whose blood has been flowing for seven long years?
The repressions against the Algerians have reached such proportions that no one who has followed the events can call the murderous onslaught of the French imperialist butchers anything but a war on extermination against an entire people.
Time and time again Algeria has come before the UN. But just as many times, the French imperialists have arrogantly walked out and thumbed their noses at the so-called court of world public opinion. Their pat stand has always been: “Algeria is strictly an internal problem of France.” Yet who among the bourgeois apologists has bothered very much to condemn the French in a way that really counts for their boycott of the UN?
How long has it been since de Gaulle’s paratroopers shot down in cold blood 800 men, women, and children in Bizerte, Tunisia – one of the most barbarous attacks in recent history?
Where was the UN? Where was the loud outburst of condemnation from the Secretary-General?
But oh how different is the situation when it comes to the Congo. Now the new Secretary-General acts with truly supersonic speed in condemning the Congolese army. The death of the UN soldiers is called “outright savagery,” and the willing tool of the imperialist masters, U Thant, demands that the Congolese soldiers “receive the punishment they deserve.”
No, U Thant, not the Congolese soldiers, but you and your imperialist masters should be punished – for it is you who have committed outright savagery not once, but hundreds of times.
The Congolese people, who have been clubbed, maimed, butchered and exploited by the most savage methods known in modern times – they cannot consider the running of their own country as an “internal affair.” They cannot walk out of the so-called “court of world public opinion.” They must be made to toe the line – if need be, by an array of the most overwhelming force and violence. And if by chance, 13 foreign soldiers – yes, 13 – are killed, then all the evil gods of imperialist and colonialist slander and vilification must descend upon the Congolese people with as much venom as though the Congolese had just exploded a bomb on one of the imperialist capitals of the world.
How many of the 30 to 40 thousand Balubas now in concentration camps are dying every day for lack of food and medicine – the result of UN imperialist machinations in the Congo?
Whose land has been robbed? Whose natural resources have been exploited and despoiled? Whose wealth has been transported? Whose country is now divided and dismembered by a foreign oppressor?
Are Congolese soldiers in control of the airports in Brussels, London, and New York? Or is the hated imperialist oppressor – by a multitude of different methods – in charge of all the economic arteries of life in the Congo? Is it by the consent of the Congolese – or against their will, that Swedes, Irish, Italians, Americans, Malayans, Indians and others are now marauding their country?
Has there ever been a country invaded by such a multitude of foreign troops? It’s more than a year since the last General Assembly meeting of the UN took place – from which so much was expected in certain quarters. At that time we said (WW, Sept. 10, 1960):
“A world crisis of gigantic proportions is now in the making ... The aim of the imperialists is to permit a verbal attack from all the anti-imperialist countries, and at the same time – by force, violence, and conspiracy – to liquidate the Congo Republic.”
How splendidly they have proceeded with their cruel and sinister scheme!
Last updated: 11 May 2026