Riots Greet King Baudouin In Congo

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29083, 21 December 1959, Page 15

Riots Greet King Baudouin In Congo

(Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, December 20. King Baudouin of Belgium was virtually a prisoner of rioting mobs in Stanleyville, in the Belgian Congo, last night, the “Daily Express’* reported.

The newspaper’s correspondent in the Congo town said African teddy boys in black leather jackets and their near-naked girl friends clashed again with police yesterday outside the town gaol. They demanded the release of Patrice Lumumba, the imprisoned leader of the Congo independence movement.

King Baudouin stayed indoors at the civil administrator’s palace. He made only one brief appearance since he flew to Stanleyville on Thursday, and that was to lay a wreath at the statue of his great uncle, King Leopold 11. The King was making attempts to solve the Congo’s independence troubles by personal diplomacy. He arrived precipitately, and his motives had been misunderstood

by almost everyone, said the correspondent. When the King arrived by air he was immediately surrounded by mobs who broke through police cordons. Then he was jostled by a threatening wedge of 400 people. When he had driven from the airport, the mobs surged to the gaol, and their mood became uglier. Thirty-five were arrested amid clouds of tear-gas, said the

correspondent. Tough coloured police seized them by the hair and pushed them through a 40-yard gauntlet of punching, kicking troops and Into the gaol. In Stanleyville, the white people were walking around with revolvers in their pockets, the correspondent said. In Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo, "you can almost hit the tension with the palm of your hand where the African and

European suburbs merge,” he said.

The Africans thought King Baudouin had come to declare the Congo independent and to free Lumumba, who was under arrest for sparking off the bloody October riots.

The white settlers and big business interests suspected that the King’s arrival signalled “an even earlier sell-out to the African nationalists than had been publicly planned In Brussels,” the correspondent said. Joseph Kasavubu, the leader of the most powerful political party, demanded a promise of general elections with votes for all in February, the correspondent said. If this was not agreed to, the Congolese said they would declare themselves independent on New Year’s Day.