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Exodus. By week's end an estimated 60,000 of the 80,000 Belgians had fled before the rampaging soldiery. In Luluabourg only 54 of 3,600 Belgians were left, and mutineers still roamed the streets looting European shops and homes. From outlying districts there came more reports of rape and mayhem. In the Equator province a Roman Catholic priest was tied to a stake, forced to watch as ten nuns were repeatedly raped. Belgium's Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Wigny spoke for his nation last week when he cried in Parliament: "Do we really have to prove with legal phrasing and quoting of legal textbooks the Tightness of our intervention, when the arrivals of our refugees prove beyond doubt its necessity?" Only bright spot for Belgium was Katanga province, whose premier, Moise Tshombe, had declared his province independent and called for Belgian intervention against the mutinous Force Publique. There was some momentary confusion when Tshombe, after announcing the independence of Katanga, seemed to reverse himself a day or two later. Disarmingly, he explained to reporters that his seeming about-face was "simply a cover-up to allow Belgium to move additional troops into Katanga," and that "it was prudent to help Belgium with this little story so that Belgium could help us." He also boasted that parts of Kivu and Kasai provinces, including the valuable Tshikapa diamond fields, were ready to join his Katanga state, and he was hopefully eying populous Ruanda-Urundi, the home of the tall and stately Watutsi tribesmen.
Tshombe announced flatly that no U.N.
troops would be permitted to enter the borders of his state. "We told the United Nations merely that there was complete calm in Katanga." At Jadotville, 100 miles to the north of his capital, the Belgians arrested General Victor Lundula, a former sergeant major who had been named supreme commander of Congo's Force Publique, and handed him over to Tshombe. Grandiloquently, Tshombe ordered the general expelled from Katanga, apparently sparing him a .. j se fate because he had "acted considerately" about the welfare of white men during the "disturbances" in Jadotville.