Hearing news from the Congo

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Imelda Conway Duffy
Interviewed for MAOHP - 23/08/2016
Reference Code: IE_MA_MAC_006_MAOHP_019_C
Location(s): Congo
Length: 2.04

In this clip, Imelda recalls being an 11-year-old girl listening to news of the Congo on their wireless radio in Wicklow and reflects on how connected the country was with the episode. Between July 1960 and June 1964, Irish troops were deployed to the Congo as part of a United Nation Peacekeeping mission. July 27th 1960 marked a watershed when the first element of 32 Infantry Battalion, the first complete unit from the Defence Forces to serve overseas, took off from Dublin bound for the Congo. The Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, led initially by the nationalist, Patrice Lumumba. Almost immediately, the new Republic of the Congo, a vast state covering much of central Africa, lapsed into civil war as two Congolese provinces, Katanga and South Kassai, backed by Belgium and to a lesser extent by France, declared themselves to be independent states. During the ONUC mission the Irish Defence Forces came of age and took its place on the international stage

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