Lumumba’s tooth returned to family decades after killing by Belgium.
A tooth believed to have been ripped from a man who once carried a nation’s hopes of freedom and democracy is finally going home.
The symbolic handover of Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba’s remains is meant to soothe a family’s and a country’s historic pain, but it is also reviving memories of European colonialism and America’s covert war to contain communism.
The return of what is widely believed to be Lumumba’s tooth means his family can finally have a “resting place where they can pray for their father,” said Brussels lawyer Christophe Marchand, who represents two of Lumumba’s five children, Francois and Roland. Without the remains, they can’t fully mourn, he said.
A Belgian official handed a blue box containing the tooth to members of his family at an official ceremony at Egmont Palace in the Belgian capital on Monday.
Peak News 