Remains Of Independence Hero Lumumba Arrive In His DR Congo Home Region

The coffin of slain Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba returned to his home region on Wednesday for an emotionally charged tour and burial, more than six decades after his assassination

Tshumbe, DR Congo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jun, 2022 ) :The coffin of slain Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba returned to his home region on Wednesday for an emotionally charged tour and burial, more than six decades after his assassination.

A plane took Lumumba's mortal remains -- a tooth that ex-colonial power Belgium handed over to his family on Monday -- from Brussels to Kinshasa for a nine-day trip around the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The coffin and an accompanying delegation then flew to the central province of Sankuru, where the country's first post-independence leader was born in the village of Onalua in 1925.

The remains will visit sites symbolically important to Lumumba's life and be laid to rest in a mausoleum in the capital Kinshasa on June 30, following three days of national mourning.

"His spirit, which was imprisoned in Belgium, comes back here," said Onalua Maurice Tasombo Omatuku, a traditional chief and nephew of Lumumba.

Finally able to mourn his uncle but knowing he was assassinated in 1961, Omatuku said he was feeling emotionally torn.