Military law is in force in Stanleyville: gatherings of more than five people are banned, a curfew has been imposed between 6pm and 5am and all bars and places of entertainment have been closed. At the African Hospital four teams of five doctors each are working shifts to treat the scores of injured who are being brought in hourly.
Although an official communique gave the death toll as 20, sources said the figure was between 70 and 75 with more than 200 injured. The situation was today reported "absolutely calm" but strongly reinforced police and military patrols were active in the city and surrounding areas dispersing groups of Africans and preventing pillaging.
Two Europeans - neither of them Belgians - were arrested with Lumumba, for whom the police have been looking since Friday. Two companies of infantry, backed by an armoured column, have succeeded in restoring order after 36 hours of rioting. Dozens of houses are raided and a social centre and several warehouses set on fire by rioters.
M Lumumba called on Thursday night, in a speech to the MNC congress, for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience. The riots flared up on Friday when the police arrived at the suburb of Mangoba to arrest M Lumumba, who had failed to answer a summons to appear before the police to explain remarks which he made in his speech. In addition to the call for disobedience, he had also ordered Congolese not to collaborate with the Belgian administration and announced that the party would not take part in the December elections.
Earlier this month the Belgian government announced the full details of the three-stage plan which will end in September 1960 with a native Congolese government in power - a government which every Belgian official in the territory stresses will be able, if it wishes, to declare the Belgian Congo completely independent.
The plan begins next month when the people of the Congo, both white and black, will go to the polls to elect territorial and communal councils. In March, 1960, the people go to the polls again, this time to elect provincial councils, one for each of the six provinces of the Belgian Congo. These provincial councils will hold what are officially described by M Auguste de Schryver, the minister for the Belgian Congo, as "extremely extensive powers in the field of provincial interests".
