The Wild Ones

The political news from the Congo sounded better. The central government of Premier Cyrille Adoula was gaining strength. Moise Tshombe of Katanga seemed to be playing along with Adoula, at least for the moment, and Red-backed Antoine Gizenga had been toppled from power. The U.S. could only keep its fingers crossed and, through the U.N., nurse along the Central Government as best it could. But other news reminded the world of an ugly fact. The Congo as a whole--Adoula's, Tshombe's, Gizenga's or anyone else's--is still a savage society.

Death Without Reason. Loose in the Congo were 3,000 wild men with machine guns, rifles, pistols, and a penchant for bizarre murder. These were the soldiers of the Central Congolese army, who took their orders from Antoine Gizenga's secessionist Stanleyville regime. Now, with Gizenga's authority broken, the ragtag little army roamed aimlessly through the eastern Congo, with few leaders and no purpose. They needed no excuse to kill; these were the men who pounced on the 13 Italian U.N. airplane crewmen in Kivu Province last November and hacked them to pieces simply because they were whites.

Last week word of the rabble's latest atrocity reached the outside world. This time the scene was Kongolo, a river town in northern Katanga which Gizenga's men occupied on Dec. 31. Outside Kongolo was the modest Catholic Mission of the Holy Spirit, where a score of sandaled, white-robed Belgian fathers had calmly continued operating their school through all the months of war and political crisis: "It is God's will that we are here," they shrugged, ignoring repeated pleas that they leave for their own safety.

When word came of the soldiers' arrival in the area, the priests did. however, put up a white flag outside the mission buildings in the hope that the marauders would leave them in peace. But hardly had the troops hit town when several Jeeploads of them showed up at the mission. Priests, nuns, black seminary students, as well as African and white refugees living there, were all marched off at gunpoint to an army camp.

Next morning the young African students were herded onto a terrace, as if to watch a show. First, 18 of the priests were whipped and brought before the terror-stricken audience. Then, as the children watched in horror, the soldiers shouted. "Now you will see how your priests die," and opened fire with their tommy guns. "Pray for us!" cried the priests before they died. This was not the end; when all were dead, the savage troops grabbed knives and dismembered the bodies, gouging out the eyes and carving voodoo symbols on the corpses as well. When it was finally over, the students were forced to dump the remains in the nearby river.

Burning Village. It was ten days before a student who managed to escape reached Bukavu to tell his grisly tale. He could not be certain that the killing ended with the deaths of the 18 priests, for ten more missionaries and six nuns from other villages in the area were missing. In Leopoldville, United Nations Congo Boss Sture Linner conferred with Central Congolese Premier Cyrille Adoula, but there was little immediate assistance he could provide; although there were more than 6,000 U.N. soldiers keeping the peace elsewhere in Katanga, they were hundreds of miles away from isolated Kongolo. And reports of incidents were already trickling in from other parts of the eastern Congo. U.N. reconnaissance pilots reported that they saw burning buildings at Sola, a tiny mission station north of Kongolo; far away, in Kivu Province, another group of the rampaging troops clashed with local police at the town of Bagira, and four Africans lay dead when the smoke cleared; still more trouble was reported at the town of Kindu, where five whites were reported killed.

What alarmed U.N. officials most was a report that the unruly soldiers might regroup and head back toward Stanleyville. Word now had reached the maraud ers that their erstwhile chief, Antoine Gizenga. was under house arrest by Adoula's Central Government forces; the unpredictable soldiers just might decide to wage a last-ditch battle on his behalf. In case they did, a U.N. airplane flew up to Stanleyville to transfer Gizenga to Leopoldville. There the rebel was not yet under formal arrest; for the moment he was living under guard in an apartment at U.N. headquarters in the capital. But now that Gizenga had been censured by Parliament and fired from his job as Deputy Premier, the way was clear to put him on trial for his secessionist activities. He might draw a long jail sentence, and just possibly death.

This would dispose of the problem of Gizenga, but Adoula still faced the urgent need of finding a substitute who could bring troublesome Eastern Province under control. First task was to round up and disarm the savages in uniform.

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