Off with Their Heads

With Patrice Lumumba safely in jail, quieter times might presumably be expected in the Congo. Not so. To Military Boss Colonel Joseph Mobutu's headquarters came an alarming telegram from Stanleyville: DEMAND IMMEDIATE LIBERATION PRIME MINISTER LUMUMBA . . .

IF NOT WILL ARREST ALL BELGIANS IN EASTERN PROVINCE AND BEGIN BY CUT TING OFF HEADS OF SOME OF THEM.

The signature on the head-chopping telegram was that of Bernard Salumu, a moody, fast-talking 31-year-old Communist sympathizer who once had been Lumumba's private secretary, now found himself in complete control of Eastern Province, which he proceeded to declare independent last week. Weeks ago Lumumba sent Salumu to Stanleyville to set the stage for a new Lumumba-run capital in competition with Leopoldville. Salumu dealt harshly with Lumumba's foes. When eleven anti-Lumumba members of the Congo's Parliament flew back to oppose the regime in Stanleyville, Salumu's men grabbed them off the plane, beat them mercilessly. One of them, Alphonse Songolo, was left blind in one eye and near death from his injuries.

Standing in the Sun. Since then Salumu has used the gendarmerie to keep Stanleyville in a perpetual state of terror. Fortnight ago he herded all 600 of Stanleyville's whites into an open field where they stood for hours in the broiling sun awaiting an "identity check." Passengers arriving by air were searched on arrival, then forced to stoop down and pick up their wallets and other belongings that Salumu's men had thrown to the ground. Daphne Parks, a consular official of the British embassy, was slapped twice by gendarmes, who then unzipped her dress. Priests and congregations more than once were ordered out of church at gun point, forced to run around in the hot sun.

Pleading a lack of orders, the U.N.'s Stanleyville garrison of 1,500 Ethiopian troops raised hardly a finger at these outrages; but last week, when the threats of beheadings came in from Stanleyville's Salumu, U.N. headquarters finally went into action. U.N. chief of staff, Ethiopia's General Mangashalyassu, was rushed to the scene to take over. He quickly commandeered a school building in which all the 2,000 whites of the province were offered haven and surrounded it with his troops. But several Belgians, in the Stanleyville jail on other charges, already were in Salumu's hands if he chose to chop heads; and, of course, the hapless, half-blind Alphonse Songolo remained a hostage.

Pleas for Patrice. In Manhattan's U.N. headquarters, the plight of Songolo bothered almost no one. The loudest laments were for Patrice Lumumba, who, it was rumored, had been mistreated in Colonel Mobutu's army jail, though doctors reported he was only somewhat bruised from the Congolese arrest techniques, which prescribe cuffing and a few kicks in the behind. Russia's Delegate Valerian Zorin introduced a new motion in the Security Council, demanding Lumumba's immediate release from jail and reinstallation as Premier. Moreover, said Zorin, the U.N. should get out of the Congo and let the peace-loving Congolese handle things themselves. Continuing Khrushchev's campaign to destroy Hammarskjold, Zorin said of the phlegmatic man at his side: "We must note once again that Mr. Hammarskjold speaks and acts like the colonizers."

The U.N.'s Congo operation was under attack from other directions. Angry at the ouster of his diplomats from Leopoldville, Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that he was withdrawing the U.A.R.'s 520 troops from the Congo command; Yugoslavia stiffly announced that it would bring home its 21 pilots, and Ceylon talked of removing all nine of its men. Then, from Djakarta came word that the 1,145 Indonesians would soon pull out. The U.N.'s Conciliation Commission could not even leave for the Congo on schedule because President Joseph Kasavubu pronounced it unwelcome.

Doggedly, Dag Hammarskjold faced the gales of criticism. "The original reasons for the U.N. military presence are still valid if we are to avoid chaos and anarchy," he told the Security Council. "Withdraw the U.N. force and, it is my fear, everything would crumble."

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