Countries, continents, and the
world at large experience jolts that move them away from their evolutionary if
not reformatory paths, resulting in seismic changes that transform them
fundamentally. Assassinations are one of the potent catalysts for these changes
as they lead to wars, political changes, and even economic transformations.
Below is an insight into far-reaching political assassinations that are still
haunting the world today:
·
Franz Ferdinand: Gavrilo Princip, a
Bosnian-Serb nationalist kills the Archduke and heir to the Austro-Hungarian
throne, thereby sparking off World War One.
·
John F. Kennedy: The legendary American
president who steers the United States of America away from nuclear
confrontation with the Soviet Union, and saves humanity in the process,
supposedly falls from the bullets of Lee Harvey Oswald who fancies himself a
Marxist.
·
Patrice Lumumba: The liquidation of the
first democratically elected leader of the infant nation of Congo (the former
Belgian Congo), plunges the country into a chaos that claims more than ten
million lives, derails it, and sets it on a trajectory that it is yet to recover
from six decades after Lumumba’s death.
·
Mahatma Gandhi: The preeminent leader of
the Indian independence movement leads India to its independence from British
rule but falls from an assassin’s bullet as he tries to heal the country
following the partition of the subcontinent. However, he wins recognition as the
father of nonviolent civil disobedience, and his legacy has been inspiring
movements for civil rights and freedom across the world ever since.
·
Abraham Lincoln: The United States of
America’s greatest president owes his prominence not only for abolishing
slavery and leading his country through a tragic civil war but for not
completing his agenda because, in 1865, John Wilkes Booth killed him hardly
half a year into his second term in office.
·
Felix-Roland Moumie: The world gets an
introduction to French neo-colonialism when the SDECE (French secret service)
uses one of its top agents to end the life of the leader of the Cameroonian
liberation movement by poisoning him in Geneva, Switzerland with thallium. His
assassination is followed two months later by assassination of Congo’s
legendary leader Patrice Lumumba, a setback in Pan-Africanism that was repeated
in 1987 with the political murder of Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso.
The more than a dozen other
accounts deal with Russia, the USA, India, Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, Nicaragua,
Libya, Burkina Faso, and The Dominican Republic!
Janvier T. Chando’s easy-to-grasp
account provides a heart-rending insight into politics, geopolitics, wars,
international conspiracies, and secret agendas.
