Soviet Attack On New Belgian Congo Policy

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28794, 15 January 1959, Page 9

Soviet Attack On New Belgian Congo Policy

MOSCOW, January 14.

The Soviet Communist Party newspaper, “Pravda,” said today that “the colonisers are intensifying their reign of police terror in the Congo,” the Soviet news agency Tass reported.

•‘The most die-hard colonisers have decided to take bloody revenge in Leopoldville and are trying by the force of arms to sr 'sh the national liberation movement.” it said. “Ever new punitive detachment keep arriving in the Congo. But it is not within the colonisers’ power to stop the storm which has broken but in the Belgian Congo. "The storm will spread and will inevitably force the oppressors to clear out of Africa.” Belgium yesterday promised her Congo territories a new deal—with elections, a “skeleton Parliament." and an end to all discrimination between black and white. King Baudouin, in a broadcast, said Belgium intended to lead the Congo peoples to "independence, in prosperity and peace.” The Prime Minister (Mr Gaston Eyskens) gave Parliament details of the proposed reforms which, he said, would make the Belgian Congo "a democracy capable of deciding its independence.” The announcement of a new Congo policy had been expected for some time before the riots in Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo, at the beginning of this month. Mr Eyskens said local elections for African councillors would be held in towns and most rural areas by the end of 1959, and in 1960 they would elect provincial councils to form a skeleton of a Chamber of Representatives. The objective of democracy would be pursued unceasingly with the collaboration of all inhabitants, he said. “The power of decision will progressively be left to them in ever wider fields,” he added. The British United Press said the new policy for the vast Belgian Congo, meant the vote in municipal and rural elections to 13,000,000 Africans.

Previously, only a few thousand so-called “evolved” Africans had been allowed the vote, and then only in municipal elections in Leopoldville and Elizabethville. Thousands of Africans, were still left without the vote, although they were mainly uneducated pygmies, and other primitive tribes. Another concession of the new deal was a decree—already signed by King Baudouin, and made retrospective to January 1— allowing Africans to serve in all grades of the Administration. The news agency said that in Leopoldville, loudspeaker lorries and troops were patrolling the African quarter—where the riots

broke out—warning that any further demonstrations would be dealt with “severely and firmly." A general 9 pan. to 5 a.m. curfew had been imposed. The precautions followed the statement made in Parliament last week that Nationalists had planned demonstrations to coincide with the delivery of today’s statement.