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7th November 2004 No 76
1. BBC: Uganda rebels seek peace talks The Ugandan rebel group whose attacks have driven more than one and a half million people from their homes says it wants peace talks with the government. A spokesman for the Lord's Resistance Army, Brigadier Sam Kolo, told the BBC the group believes there is no military solution to the 18-year civil war. The rebels want President Yoweri Museveni to say the government is looking for a peaceful end to the war. The LRA has been severely reduced in recent months. Horror From an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 fighters in 2002, the army now claims there are less than 200 armed fighters remaining though this claim is impossible to verify. Earlier this year Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he would order a ceasefire if LRA rebels were willing to hold direct peace talks. But the BBC's Will Ross in Kampala says President Museveni has always placed most emphasis on trying to inflict a military defeat on the rebels. The United Nations have described the situation in northern Uganda as the most neglected humanitarian crisis in the world with 20,000 children caught up in the war. Arrest Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church in Uganda says the Ugandan authorities have arrested a leading priest on suspicion of collaborating with the LRA. 2. IRIN: Radio programme that touches hearts of rebels [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] GULU, 1 November (IRIN) - Johny Lacambel, a local radio presenter, offers his two guests some soda before asking the tall dark male with an amputated limb to lead in prayers as the programme begins. The trice-weekly "Dwog Paco", the local Acholi language for "Come Back Home," is credited with touching many hearts and convincing a number of rebels to surrender. The amputee is Charles Otim Mono, 33, a Lt-Col in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that has been battling government forces in the north of the country for the past 18 years. A girl with a pensive look sits next to Otim, seemingly amused by what is going on. She is Lilly Acira, a rebel fighter, who, like thousands of children in this region, was kidnapped at the age of 10 years to join the rebel ranks. The two were guests for the one-and-a-half hour programme on local radio, MEGA FM, whose coverage beams across northern Uganda and some parts of southern Sudan. It is used for former rebels to talk directly to their colleagues still in the bush about how they have been treated and the existence of the amnesty given to them by the government. Acira describes rebel life as being underlined by hunger, which has forced rebels to feed on leaves; isolation and some times death, before she appeals to friends still hiding in the bush to give themselves up. "To our commander Anywa, Evelyn your wife is with us, but she got injuries in the arms and the breasts," Acira said. "You need to come out and meet her. And to you Vincent Otti (LRA's second in command) - I am your sister," she continues. "We come from the same family. One of your wives was injured during a helicopter raid. I talked to her a few minutes before she died and the fate of two of your other wives and the escort is not known." The army and the radio management bring captured rebels on air. Sometimes they are surrendered rebels or those rescued from rebel captivity. So far, the highest-ranking LRA rebel that the programme has hosted was Brig Kenneth Banya, who was the third in command in the LRA hierarchy. The Ugandan army captured Banya in July. "When you listen to the children, they are more passionate and they talk to the heart about their experience in captivity and as rebel fighters , Lucy Lapoti, who was doing interpretation for IRIN, said. Army spokesman Maj Shaban Bantariza calls it "communicating appropriately". Lacambel calls his programme the only peace talks with the rebels, who have eluded efforts to peacefully end the brutal rebellion that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and whose main victims are children and women. "The impact has been good. It undermines LRA's propaganda that suggests we kill those we capture, rescue or those who surrender to us," Maj Bantariza adds. Scores of other LRA members - from adolescent foot soldiers to senior commanders - have been sneaking away in recent months. The military says that at least 1,000 LRA fighters, including 84 commanders, have defected since January, which is dramatically weakening the LRA. The army's Children Protection Unit (CPU), housed in a dilapidated building in Gulu, is where all those rescued, captured or surrendered people are taken for screening before they are rehabilitated. When IRIN visited the unit, 10 juveniles as young as 12, including two girls, were being screened. "I was abducted in 2002 when the rebels attacked Anaka camp," Joel Oloya, 13, said. He took advantage of the darkness after sunset to crawl back home. Relief agencies estimate that 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA to serve as fighters since the movement began. Most of them are used as porters or sex slaves for rebel commanders. 3. Monitor: Sierra Leone lawyer assigned Konys case KAMPALA - A Sierra Leonean prosecutor has been appointed to handle investigations in the case of alleged war crimes against Ugandas most wanted rebel leader, Joseph Kony. The International Criminal Court over the weekend announced Gloria Atiba-Davies appointment to handle criminal investigations from Uganda. Atiba-Davies, 49, is known for prosecuting Sierra Leonean junta leader, Maj. Johnny Paul Koroma, for leading a coup attempt in Sierra Leone. After Koroma came into power, Atiba-Davies was forced to flee to exile in Britain where she has since lived as a refugee. The ICC was established in 1998 by the United Nations to ensure that the worst international crimes, such as genocide, did not go unpunished. ICC is currently investigating possible crimes against humanity by Konys notorious Lords Resistance Army rebel group. The LRA is accused of massacring and kidnapping thousands of children and turning them into sex slaves and child soldiers. 4. Opinion_Weekly Observer: Too many suicides in IDP camps For a long time I have been hearing that there is an average of three suicides a week in Pabbo, Acholis largest IDP camp, which hosts more than 60,000 people. My first reaction was to think that perhaps the figure was an exaggeration, until recently, when I spent three days in Anaka IDP camp (40,000 people) and medical personnel there assured me that the suicide rate is two people per week. The problem remains extremely serious, especially when you think that many of the people taking their own lives are young folks. Some specific cases leave you baffled: A woman has been saving Shs 10,000 for months to buy a cheap dress and one day her husband finds the tempting money and squanders it at once, getting dead drunk with his friends. The woman takes poison and dies. A man quarrels with his wife; his brother storms the house and tells him off for behaving like that. The angry husband, feeling humiliated runs away, and on the following morning they find him hanging from a tree. What puzzles me more is the fact that in traditional Acholi society as in many other African cultures suicide used to be extremely rare. Some traditional rituals related to it are most striking: If a man hanged himself his corpse would be thoroughly beaten up before his burial, and the tree had to be uprooted and completely burnt until no trace of it remained. This was a very strong message to all: Whatever misfortune may befall you, never, never attempt the abomination of killing yourself. No matter how painful your troubles may be you will always find people, particularly in your clan, who will comfort you, counsel you and help you find a way out. The very first time I stepped in Acholi, in 1984, I realised that although often life could be very hard the nearest borehole 10 km away, the nearest hospital perhaps 50 km the people knew how to enjoy it to the full. In this blessed part of Uganda I have learnt to be happy with the small things of every day life and to face hardships with a sense of humour: Go for a communal digging at the beginning of the rainy season and enjoy a cheerful chicken-and-beer party under a big tree later in the evening, or go for a hunting expedition if it is the dry season and come back with your game blowing your bila (horn-whistle). If you are not so adventurous, you may find it easier to go around April with your torch to catch white ants at midnight. And almost every night you will enjoy the worlds most exciting happening at the wang oo (the fireplace), where all the family gathers to share stories. You will laugh about the cunning hare that defeated the ogre, Obibi, or the owl that went dancing with the pigeons head. You may test your sharpness guessing endless riddles posed by the children, then enjoy a delicious supper of the green boo leaves (I know at least ten different ways of cooking them) or game meat with olel (sim sim paste). In the distance you can hear the throbbing of drums and gourds announcing the wooing larakaraka dance for the youth under the bright moonlight. That was 18 years ago. Since then most people have been forced to be separated from their close family members. They had to hide in the bush for long periods. Many have had their homes burnt and their properties destroyed. They have experienced robbery, abduction, forced labour, torture and murder of close relatives. They have witnessed beatings and killings. Many have lost hope and are broken inside. Life is no longer enjoyable, but sheer misery. Recently, the international NGO World Vision published Pawns of Politics, a report which argues that the full resolution of the northern conflict will happen when, among other things, (a) hidden LRA weapons caches are found, (b) LRA commanders are resettled, (c) IDPs are able to safely leave camps and resettle. Let me add my own (d): When war stops inside peoples hearts and they can look again at life as a wonder to enjoy, not as a heavy burden to get rid of. hobenon@ugandaobserver.com By Genevieve Butler (25th October, 2004) BRUSSELS (AlertNet) Political interests at home and abroad are helping to keep northern Ugandas 18-year conflict out of the global spotlight despite the fact that more people have been displaced there than in Sudans Darfur region, NGOs say. Some aid agencies argue that Ugandas special relationship with donors which provide 50 percent of the countrys annual budget and the countrys reputation as a development success story sometimes distract from what the United Nations has described as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Almost two million people have been displaced in northern Uganda, compared with just over a million in Darfur, yet the crisis rarely makes international headlines or sparks outcry from world leaders. For Ugandan President Yoweri Musuveni, that may be just as well, NGOs say. The permanence of a crisis helps the government to get more money from the outside, a programme officer for an NGO working in the region said. The government has not had a great interest to find a solution to the conflict. The officer, like several others contacted by AlertNet, declined to be identified for fear his organisations operations would be compromised if he criticised the government. The Lords Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group and religious sect, has been terrorising northern Uganda for years, uprooting almost the entire population of Acholiland, kidnapping children to camps in southern Sudan and forcing them to become fighters and sex slaves. The Ugandan government denies it is encouraging the insurgency, and Museveni claims he could act more effectively against the LRA if donors lifted spending curbs on defence. But some NGOs say the insurgency has allowed Museveni to consolidate his grip on power. President Museveni pursues a military solution in part to justify the unreformed army that is a key pillar of his regime, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report issued in April. Indeed, the war helps him justify and maintain the status quo in Ugandan politics, denying his opposition a power base and offering numerous opportunities for curtailing freedom of expression and association in the name of the war against terrorism. ICGs Africa director, Suliman Baldo, said many factors were prolonging the crisis, including traditional historical neglect of the impoverished north, the ineffectiveness of the Ugandan army and a complex relationship with neighbouring Sudan, which has backed the LRA because it accuses Uganda of supporting insurgents in southern Sudan. Put these factors together and you begin to get the picture, Baldo said. The government has not invested in the north, he said, echoing the ICG report, which found that as long as the situation in the north was dominated by security matters, the monopolisation of power and wealth by southerners would not be questioned. Baldo also said the nature of the war exacerbated the difficulties in resolving it. The LRA insurgency, led by self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Kony, lacks any clear and negotiable political objectives. One of the difficulties in Uganda is understanding what the rebel cause is all about, said James Allen, programme officer for the International Rescue Committee UK. Who is the LRA? What are they fighting for? When its an enemy you dont know, how do you defeat it? Initially Kony said he was fighting to free his northern Acholi tribe from what he said was oppression by the southern-based government. Later, feeling that his own people had failed to support him, he unleashed a campaign of massacres, mutilations and abductions designed to cleanse the Acholi of sinners . DONOR INTERESTS For their part, donors would rather focus on Ugandas successes, rather than its failures, NGOs say. Uganda is presented as a champion of development and as a champion in the fight against terrorism, said a representative of an international NGO. Saying the contrary would be a problem for donors who have invested big money. But money doesnt always end up where its supposed to go, NGOs say. Another programme officer said funding earmarked for health and education was flowing back into the central governments coffers because the villages in the targeted region were deserted. The best way to monitor the use of aid funding is to work directly in the camps with the cooperation of the local government, he added. We have a lot of people on the spot to check how the money is being spent, even if there is a problem of security. Another aid official said national authorities needed to show a greater commitment to ensuring the security and protection of their own population and relief workers, given the dangers of working in LRA territory. We see the army is requesting people to be in camps and is failing to protect them, he said, adding that displaced people were often sitting ducks for LRA raids. One day the World Food Programme distributes food and the next day the LRA comes and takes the food, kidnaps people to carry the food, and kidnaps children to be child soldiers. ANOTHER DARFUR? U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland compared the situation to the well-publicised problems in Sudans Darfur region. If they go out (of camps), they are killed as much, or raped as much or worse as in Darfur, by the Lords Resistance Army and others, Egeland said in a recent statement. Museveni has rejected the comparison, but that hasnt stopped aid workers continuing to make it. One hundred percent of the population is affected by this kind of crisis its huge, Gael Griette, an expert covering Uganda for the European Commissions Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), told AlertNet. Griette said that the entire rural population of Acholiland was in displacement camps. People have been cut off from their livelihoods, cut off from everything. They are in camps with nothing, and insecurity is very high, he said. In terms of magnitude and acuteness we can compare what is going on in Northern Uganda to Darfur. What is very different between the two crises is the way it is addressed in terms of funding, humanitarian agencies being present in the field, and on top of all it is very different in the way it is being covered in the media. Griette said one of the reasons northern Uganda did not get much media coverage was because the LRA had been terrorising the local population for so long that the crisis was seen as old news. But this is short-sighted because the crisis has tripled in terms of the number of people affected and multiplied by five or six in terms of acuteness in the past two years more or less the same time as the Darfur crisis, he said. NO PROTECTION The jury is still out on whether the government is committed to or capable of ending the crisis. Heres how Emmanuel Lutukumoi, a programme director for United Youth Action, a community group based in Northern Uganda, put it in a recent article for New Vision, a Ugandan newspaper: To date, it is still hard for the Acholi to distinguish who is their worst enemy. They see no difference between Kony and the state that has failed to give them protection and failed to address the root causes of the conflict. But according to Ugandan officials, Kony is now on the run. The Ugandan army said in September it had forced him to flee bases in southern Sudan and return to Uganda for the first time in years, and it has recently claimed significant victories against the LRA. In the past decade, Kony is believed to have orchestrated his violent campaign from hideouts in neighbouring Sudan. Since 1994, Sudan has backed the LRA with weapons and training. Following international pressure, Sudan allowed Ugandan forces to raid LRA bases in its territory under a 2002 accord. But the situation remains precarious, according to the ICGs Baldo. Reports from the south show that the current phase of collaboration between Uganda and Sudan appears to be affecting the fighting capacity of the LRA, he said. There are indications that somehow the Sudanese government continues to support the LRA. Therefore they have been playing a dual game here, he said. 6. Development issues KAMPALA Hundreds of debt-ridden Indian commercial farmers are lobbying government to allow them relocate to Uganda to start a new life. This follows committing of suicide by over 500 of their colleagues who were in distress since May this year. The farmers from the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh want Uganda to allocate them 100,000 hectares of farmland, according to a Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) official, John Musajja Akawa. He told Sun day Monitor that a team
led by Mr CC Reddy, an advisor to the Andhra Pradesh government is still in
negotiations with government on the matter. Information Minister, Nsaba Buturo says: The issue of land is not a problem and the state of our infrastructure is also not that prohibitive. He however cited political sabotage. The Pradesh state plans to send hundreds of farmers to East Africa to cultivate farmland. Pradesh has already been in talks with Kenya to lease 20, 000 hectares and send about 1, 000 farmers there to work, according to media reports. At least 502 farmers have killed themselves since May. 7. Society, Culture and Camp news THE Catholic Church has described the arrest of the Episcopal Vicar of Kigum Christ the King Church, Monsignor Matthew Ojara, as persecution of the Catholic Church, writes Chris Ochowun. The Vicar General of Gulu Archdiocese, Monsignor Matthew Odong, while briefing the press in Gulu town on Wednesday, said the arrest of Ojara, who is also a member of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), would jeopardise the efforts of the religious leaders towards peace building in the war ravaged region. We know Monsignor Ojara as a priest who is committed to peace and his arrest is a form of persecution to the whole church, Odong said. (b) New Vision: Govt helps IDPs By Vision Reporter (05th November, 2004) The Government has started easing congestion in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in the north to prepare the people for resettlement. UPDF spokesman Maj. Shaban Bantariza told journalists yesterday that the exercise followed the defeat of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels of Joseph Kony. He said the exercise would start from the most congested Pabbo Camp, which has 60,000 people. This is a back-to-the-village movement, which is to be gradual, Bantariza told a weekly press briefing at Nakasero, Kampala. He said the rebels had decreased, That is why you hear that Kony has been in Uganda for a month and there has not been trouble. Bantariza said the IDPs in Pabbo would be divided into three groups of 20,000 people each, with one group remaining at Pabbo and the other groups distributed in Jengari and Otong camps. He said the exercise would allow IDPs to have more land for cultivation as they prepare for resettlement. Meanwhile, Cornelius Lubangakene of Rupiny, the local Luo weekly newspaper, write on the 4.11.04, that the residents of Pabbo IDP camp are resisting being transferred to the newly created smaller government camps. This was revealed in a report presented in the district council hall on 28.10.04, by the Emergency Monitoring Group. This Group comprising of the different NGOs and district leaders was appointed by the District Council. The Group also decried the deteriorated conditions in Pabbo camp. (c) Rupiny: LRA officer sends children to grandparent By A. Ochira (1st November, 2004) A LRA Captain Ochan George, on Monday 18.10.2004 sent three of his children from the bush to their grandparents in Pajule sub-county, Ojile parish. Two of the children were boys and one girl. They were named Lokwiya Alex, Lapeko Lawrence and Anek Maracilina, respectively. Ochan instructed his wife Ester Labwol to report to government officials and later take his children to their grandparents. 8. Counting the weekly reported human costs of the war*
Sources: New Vision, Monitor, BBC, IRIN, Rupiny, MEGA FM, Simba FM, The Uganda Weekly Observer Note: G= Gulu,
K= Kitgum, P= Pader; L=LRA, U= UPDA & LDU,
O= Others |
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