Patrice Lumumba’s Daughter Juliana Renews Call for Justice as Belgium Weighs Criminal Case
64 years after Patrice Lumumba’s assassination, daughter Juliana Lumumba urges Belgium to deliver truth and accountability. A criminal court in Brussels may finally hear the case.
Edem Latsu Nukafu 
Sixty-four years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, his daughter Juliana Lumumba continues her unrelenting pursuit of justice. This week, her struggle gained new momentum as Belgium’s federal prosecutor recommended that the Lumumba case be transferred to a criminal court in Brussels, opening the door to long-awaited accountability.
“You cannot be the child of Patrice Lumumba without this impacting your life,” Juliana said from her home in Kinshasa.
A National Hero, A Family’s Wound
Patrice Lumumba, a towering figure of African independence, led Congo to freedom from Belgian colonial rule in 1960. His anti-colonial stance and alignment with Soviet interests made him a marked man during the Cold War. Lumumba was executed on January 17, 1961 in Katanga, with the complicity of Belgian and American forces. His body was dissolved in acid, and two of his teeth were kept as trophies by Belgian officer Gerard Soete.
Juliana, then only five years old, learned of her father’s horrific fate while in exile in Cairo under the protection of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Belgium’s Complicity and the Long Road to Justice
A 2001 Belgian parliamentary inquiry acknowledged Belgium’s role in Lumumba’s death but led to no prosecutions. In 2011, Juliana’s brother, Francois Lumumba, filed a war crimes complaint against Belgium. Today, of the ten Belgian officials named, only Etienne Davignon, 92, is still alive.
“Everybody agrees that there was an assassination. There is a crime. But nobody has done it,” Juliana noted bitterly.
Belgium returned one of Lumumba’s teeth to his family in 2022 and issued official regrets, but Juliana remains unsatisfied.
“It’s not a problem of apology. It’s a problem of truth. Vérité.”
A Legacy Without Closure
As Patrice Lumumba’s 100th birthday approaches on July 2, 2025, his legacy as a champion of African liberation remains entwined with the quest for truth and justice.
For Juliana, the struggle is not for revenge but for dignity:
“He was a national hero to many. But to me, he was simply my father.”
Her fight continues—so that Congo, and the world, may finally reckon with a crime that shaped a nation’s destiny.
