Émile Janssens

Background Émile Janssens served in various military roles during World War II. He served in Abyssinia, Nigeria, the Middle East, France, Holland and Belgium.

On 1 February 1954, Janssens was given command of the Force Publique, the gendarmerie of the Belgian Congo which also acted as the colony's armed forces. He took over from Auguste Gilliaert who had commanded it since World War II. Since its creation, the entire Force Publique was tightly segregated along racial lines and, despite being majority black, was commanded entirely by white officers. In 1958, Janssens was further promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General.

With the independence of Congo-Léopoldville on 30 June 1960, Janssens remained in charge of the Force Publique. During the final years of colonial rule, he had firmly opposed initiatives to allow black soldiers into the traditionally white officer corps of the Force Publique. Immediately prior to independence there were still no commissioned black officers in the Force, although about twenty Congolese officer cadets had commenced training at military academies in Belgium. This attitude caused unrest among the black troops under his command, already unsettled by the stress of keeping order during the independence celebrations and seeing themselves as excluded from the benefits of independence. Janssens was determined that the social order created under the Belgian colonial rule would continue even in the new independent state.

He called a meeting of the NCOs of the Léopoldville garrison on 5 July 1960, just six days after independence, where he wrote on a blackboard, "Before independence = After independence" and gave an accompanying speech in which he argued that independence did not change anything for the army.

The message infuriated the soldiers under his command, who within hours mutinied and attacked European residents in the Congo. The mutiny, beginning at Camp Hardy near Thysville, Regardless, in the aftermath of the mutiny, Janssens resigned from his post, also resulting from differences with the government of Patrice Lumumba.

Janssaens was replaced by Victor Lundula, who had been hastily promoted to General from the rank of Sergeant-Major. In his later years he wrote widely on his experience of the Congo Crisis and of Congolese history of the colonial period in general. He is particularly noted for his 1979 work on the history of the Force Publique.

In 1964, Janssens unsuccessfully stood as lead candidate for the minor far-right Parti national (National Party) party in the local elections. The party was closely associated with the neocolonialist Amitiés Belgo-Katangaises movement which supported the secession of the Katanga from the Congo. From 1983 to 1989, he served as head of the Belgian nationalist organization Pro Belgica.

In popular culture In the 2000 film Lumumba, directed by Raoul Peck, Janssens was played by .