All together, dear brothers and sisters, workers and government employees, workers by brain and by hand, rich and poor, Africans and Europeans, Catho… - Patrice Lumumba

We became the target of attacks because we no longer want to submit ... and reject corruption. They tried to bribe us and millions were promised to me, but I refused, I did not take a single centime.

We have known the atrocious sufferings of those who were imprisoned for their political opinions or religious beliefs and of those exiled in their own country. Their fate was worse than death itself. Who will forget the rifle-fire from which so many of our brothers perished, or the gaols in to which were brutally thrown those who did not want to submit to a regime of justice, oppression and exploitation which were the means the colonialists employed to dominate us?

I took the money not for myself, but for my political activities, I hurt no private individual, only the Belgian state, which at the time was my worst enemy, it had plunderd us, now i plunderd it.