| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
Child fighters face deadly last stand in Sudan Sat 13 Apr 2002 James Astill in Nairobi UP TO 5,000 child fighters have been encircled by Sudanese and Ugandan troops in southern Sudan, in readiness for an all-out assault on their cult-driven rebel army. With the abducted and brainwashed children so far violently resisting efforts to negotiate, the United Nations Children’s agency is warning of a possible child massacre. "These are indoctrinated children who believe they have to fight to the death - and neither Ugandan nor Sudanese soldiers are likely to feel too sorry for them," said Nils Kastburg, UNICEF’s director of emergency programmes, yesterday. "It is proving impossible to reach them, and we’re getting pretty desperate." The joint offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a brutal Ugandan rebel group, led by a self-declared spirit medium with supernatural powers, and largely composed of stolen children, began two weeks ago. After fleeing its four main camps along the eastern bank of the White Nile in southern Sudan, the estimated 7,000 rebel fighters have dispersed into several pockets. **** "We’ve got desperate parents in Uganda wanting their children back, and meanwhile they're fighting to the death in Sudan," Mr Kastburg said. "We are extremely frustrated not to be making more headway." **** "It’s a war, so people will be killed and wounded on both sides," said David Pulkol, Uganda’s chief of external security, from Kampala yesterday. "But we are trying to limit collateral damage. For the abducted children, it’s search and rescue. For Kony and the others, it's search and destroy." Mr Pulkol said a safe corridor into Uganda had been opened to LRA women and children before the camps were destroyed, but they had chosen to remain with the rebels. "It’s extremely puzzling. The people who we thought would be surrendering are not surrendering. They must either be expecting outside help, or to be extremely loyal." Mr Kony, a former altar boy who wears dreadlocks and women’s dresses, claims to have been called by God to topple the "Satanic" Ugandan government of Yoweri Museveni and institute the Ten Commandments as the country’s constitution. Fusing elements of Christianity, traditional spirit worship and the occult, he claims to be possessed by the Holy Spirit, and the spirits of a Chinese general and an Italian missionary. Crossing back and forth from their former refuge in Sudan, the rebels have displaced more than half a million people in northern Uganda and abducted around 15,000 children to be fighters and sex slaves. Children as young as six years old are typically bound to the LRA by being forced to kill those who try to escape. Thousands of northern Ugandan villagers have been punished for breaking Kony’s laws - including a ban on bicycles - with amputations and horrific facial disfigurement. "Kony’s a maniac, who specialises in torturing children," said Robby Muhumuza, an expert on the movement. "He tells them he can see them wherever they are. Then he sprinkles them with magic water and uses them as cannon fodder. Please God, this is the end of him." **** From http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=395632002 | ||
| Anonymous |
Child fighters in Uganda learn to kill and to suffer By Ilana Ozernoy, Globe Correspondent, 5/12/2002 ULU, Uganda - Kristine Abalo never wanted to leave her family at age 12. She never wanted to steal or to kill. But like many children in this town, Abalo never had a choice. Now 18, she is among the 10,000 children kidnapped and turned into soldiers or sex slaves by the Lord's Resistance Army over the past 16 years as the shadowy rebel group swept across northern Uganda in a wave of arson, murder, and thievery. Abalo said that at first the guerrillas, led by a self-proclaimed prophet, forced her to steal clothes and grain from villages and carry ammunition to the front lines. Then they taught her how to shoot. ''The rebels forced me to kill many people,'' said Abalo, who also said she had been repeatedly raped by one of them. ''We were told that if we didn't fight, we would be killed by the rebels, and if we were cowards on the battlefield, we would be killed.'' ===Government soldiers face a dogged foe in the Lord's Resistance Army, which seeks to replace Uganda's secular government with a regime based on the Ten Commandments. The rebel leader, Joseph Kony, says he is possessed by God, and he rules over the fighters combining elements of Christianity, traditional spirit worship, and the occult. ===Returning the children safely will not be an easy task. The rebels have brainwashed them to fight to the death, and anyone who is caught escaping is publicly slain to set an example. ===''The children have flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, they lose the ability to concentrate,'' Tiboa, the group's director, said from his office. ''There is also a physical impact. Some children come back with missing limbs. Some come back HIV-positive.'' ===''Our community is bad, in that when a family learns that their son has brought home a girl who was in captivity, they are abusive and unwelcoming,'' she said. ''When I asked other child mothers if they had any hope for future children, most of them said they have no hope, and they have no desire.'' This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 5/12/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/132/nation/Child_fighters_in_Uganda_learn_to_kill_and_suffer+.shtml | ||
| Anonymous |
Hard return for Uganda's lost children Rebels have abducted an estimated 15,000 children to serve as soldiers and slaves. By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor GULU, UGANDA – *** It is estimated that some 15,000 boys and girls have been abducted by the LRA during the 16 years of on again-off again civil war here. They are hauled off from classrooms, pounced upon at a drinking well, even dragged out of bed at night – then forced to carry the rebels' equipment, prepare food, serve as concubines, and, eventually, carry guns, abduct others, and fight for the rebel cause. Many have been released or escaped over the years, but thousands remain with the rebels and more are kidnapped every day. They are at once both the children and the enemies of this community. Uganda's operation "Iron Fist," launched five months ago, was intended to flush the rebels out of their southern Sudanese bases once and for all – and allow safe passage back home to the abducted child troops. It has not worked out that way. "Yesterday's abductees are today's brainwashed fighters," says Geoffrey Kalebbo of World Vision, a Christian aid organization which runs the ex-combatant rehabilitation camp in Gulu. "Perhaps they are unable to escape. But maybe they don't want to leave anymore. They feel they belong there." Holy water and hand grenades These abducted children are part of a bizarre guerrilla outfit led by a former altar boy turned self-proclaimed prophet named Joseph Kony. Their mission is to overthrow the government of President Yoweri Museveni, install a new leadership which will rule by the Ten Commandments, and restore honor to the marginalized Acholi people of the north – the very same group they come from, and now prey upon. Splashing themselves with "holy water" before battle in order to become invisible to the enemy, and armed for years – by the Sudanese government in Khartoum – with the most modern equipment, these youngsters have wreaked havoc on northern Uganda, burning homes, looting, and hacking off lips and ears of suspected government collaborators. Close to half a million people have been displaced during this long war and the economy here is paralyzed. "Sometimes three people could rape one little girl," says a former LRA fighter with wild eyes. "Sometimes we could burn down a whole village, and sometimes we could stomp on someone to death." Abducted at age nine, this teenager fought with the LRA for two years before he ran away. At home he found his family had been killed, and then, en route to look for his uncles in another district, he was re-abducted and kept for another two years before escaping again. He does not know his real name and has called himself "Bush," after the US president. He is waiting at the World Vision camp for word of family. "But I know already," he says. "There is nowhere for me." Bush limps and walks with his legs slightly apart. He has a bullet wound in one leg and a rash up his other and has wrapped toilet paper around both. Most of the children have spend months, even years, living in abysmal conditions – eating leaves, drinking dirty water, sleeping outside, carrying loads too heavy for them, and never changing clothes. They often arrive with serious health problems and terrible trauma. The road to recovery One young boy here, Patrick, had his whole jaw blown off and can smile only with his eyes. A teenage girl, Betty, still wearing the torn flowery dress her "husband" looted for her on her last outing with the rebels, tells of how her baby – strapped to her back during battle – was shot. "I did not even hear the cry," she recalls. Most here don't know their last names. A tiny girl, in a stained red silky shirt, sits by the camp's social worker's desk with tears trickling down her cheeks. She answers no questions. At the camp, the children are cared for, protected, and given basic psychological counseling as volunteers search for their families. Not an easy task with communities on the run, and the roads to the villages dangerous to pass. Patrick Okot's parents have been traced, and they are at the camp to pick him up – wearing their best, albeit rumpled, clothes and looking shocked to see their son, lost over a year ago. "He is the same to me. He is my boy," says mother Lillian, looking uncertain. Even with 10,000 troops devoted to routing Kony's fighters, and much blustery rhetoric, it seems the UPDF has not only been unable to significantly harm the LRA, but has, instead, brought them right to the doorstep of the population and created further panic. With the LRA now hiding out in the forests and mountains of northern Uganda itself, people here are terrified. All attempts at peace talks, meanwhile, have so far come to naught. *** Extracted from http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0827/p01s02-woaf.html | ||
| Anonymous |
Ugandan rebels grab 40 civilians By Will Ross BBC, Kampala Monday, 16 September, 2002, 16:42 GMT 17:42 UK The rebels of the Lords Resistance Army, carried out a series of attacks over the weekend, kidnapping 41 people. As a result of an LRA attack on a convoy carrying World Food Programme assistance to displaced people, the agency has suspended operations in northern Uganda. Thousands of civilians have been abducted. The rebels also reportedly killed two men for taking part in the national census, which started on Friday. ...On Friday morning, a group of LRA rebels attacked the Pader district offices killing at least three people, according to local reports. The dead were a local council official, the intelligence officer for the sub county, and a primary school teacher. ...On Saturday, rebels abducted two priests and dozens of civilians from Opiti mission. The priests were released but 35 civilians are still missing. On the same day the rebels targeted a WFP truck, despite the fact that it was travelling in a military convoy. The driver was killed. At 0200 on Monday, a group of rebels attacked the country's largest camp for internally displaced people at Pabo, north of Gulu. They abducted six people after looting the camp's shops. There are nearly half a million Ugandans living in such camps and they all receive food assistance from the WFP. ...Reports from Lira District say that rebels have issued a letter calling on the population not to cooperate in the national census, which began on Friday. In Okwang 60 kilometres north-east of Lira, two men were reportedly killed for taking part in the census. People in the area are concerned because the officials carrying out the census mark the wall of each house they have visited, making it easy for the rebels to know who has taken part. But over the past three days 34 civilians have been rescued by the military, according to army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/africa/2262010.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Christian militants seize teen girls in raid September 16 2002 at 03:57PM Kampala - Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) early on Monday attacked a displaced people's camp in northern Uganda and abducted six teenage girls, a military spokesperson said. The raiders entered the Pabo camp, the largest in Gulu district, during the night after engaging a dozen soldiers stationed there in a firefight, army spokesperson Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda said. +++The camp shelters about 63 000 of an estimated 500 000 people displaced by the unrest in northern Uganda, which began 16 years ago. +++The rebels' main method of recruitment is by abduction, and the group is estimated to have abducted at least 10 000 children and young people in the last six years alone. - Sapa-AFP http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=68&art_id=qw1032182641977B225&set_id=1 | ||
| Anonymous |
Uganda: Reward Offered for the Capture of God 14:02 2002-12-09 The Lord’s Resistance Army is ruled by a man called Joseph Kony, a modern-day Pol Pot, who kidnaps children and forces them to fight the Ugandan government forces and takes nuns from convents and turns them into sex slaves. The Ugandan Army is now being offered a 16,000 Euro bounty for the capture of this man who is worshipped as a God by his followers. Kony and his murderous band of criminals operates from southern Sudan, striking deep into Uganda. His activities have caused the internal displacement of one and a half million persons. Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army has a peculiar set of rules. Based on the Ten Commandments, one of which is Thou shalt not kill, he then forces new members to murder family members to prove their loyalty and commitment to him. Kony basks in the adoration of his followers, claiming to have visitations from the Holy Ghost. The Ugandan government has signed a treaty with the Sudanese government which will allow the Ugandan army to cross the border to try to flush Kony out of his hideout before he can murder many more innocent victims. In the past two months, 4,000 people have disappeared during raids by his followers, who wear crucifixes and other religious insignia, which Kony tells them will protect them from bullets. Kony has perpetrated horrific acts of torture, beating people to death with rifle butts, cutting people to pieces with machetes and boiling people alive before forcing the close relatives to eat the bodies. He intends to overthrow the Ugandan government and install his regime in Kampala, setting up a theocracy based on the Ten Commandments. http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/12/09/40550.html | ||
| Anonymous |
It is strange that I have not heard of this in the news media. However, had it been reported, it would have been reported as "fundamentalist" extremism and these terrorists would have been lumped in with good people, orthodox, fundamental Christians. Not only are the mainstream media guilty of propagandizing, but too many otherwise good, but naive, people fall for their garbage. | ||
| Anonymous |
Priests hacked to death 19/05/2003 19:34 - (SA) Kampala - It's been confirmed that at least four of 44 trainee priests abducted from a Ugandan seminary have been slaughtered by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The trainees, aged between 12 and 18, were abducted from their dormitories at St Mary's Seminary in Gulu, 400km north of Kampala, on the night of May 11. Ugandan soldiers rescued five of the young men near the border with Sudan last Thursday. +++ They said four other trainees were hacked to death with machetes when they were unable to walk after being tortured. Altogether, 32 trainees are still missing. +++ Three students who escaped after the abduction and returned to the seminary said the rebels had told them that they were being taken to Sudan for military training. In the last 16 years, the LRA has abducted thousands of children and forced them to fight alongside the rebels. Boys are used as child soldiers and the girls as sex slaves of the militia commanders. Unicef estimates 10 000 children have been abducted by the rebels and taken to their bases in southern Sudan. It's believed that the seminary's attackers were part of a group of 700 LRA fighters who have fled Sudan following a suspected outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus. - African Eye News Service seen at 2-11-1447_1361678%2C00.html,http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1361678,00.html | ||
| Anonymous |
Uganda's atrocious war By Will Ross BBC, Kitgum, Uganda Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has become synonymous with torture, abductions and killings The rebels chop off noses and ears "They tied me and laid me down. They told me not to cry. Not to make any noise. Then one man sat on my chest, men held my arms, legs, and one held my neck". "Another picked up an axe. First he chopped my left hand, then my right. Then he chopped my nose, my ears and my mouth with a knife." 23-year-old David was abducted by rebels of the LRA, who falsely accused him of being a government soldier. While they were carrying out these atrocities, David pleaded with the rebels to kill him. Instead they wrapped up David's ears in a letter warning people against joining the government forces. ... Tens of thousands are not prepared to take the risk that the rebels may strike their homes. So they either sleep in the bushes or at dusk they walk into urban centres to sleep in the grounds of hospitals or on shop verandas. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2982818.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Trapped in a deadly game of hide-and-seek Ugandan children spend nights on the run from ruthless killers their own age Rory Carroll in Kitgum Wednesday June 25, 2003 The Guardian The hide-and-seek begins at bedtime when thousands of small figures emerge from grass huts and tramp towards the town of Kitgum in the gloom. It is a cold night to spend on the streets but the children huddle under the stars until dawn. Out in the bush, unseen, are other children: the seekers armed with AK-47s, clubs and knives. It is a game played every night in the nearby towns and villages, an area stretching for hundreds of miles. If the hiders are found by the child warriors of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), they experience one of three outcomes: they are killed on the spot, marched into the bush and killed, or marched into the bush and forced to become killers themselves. It sounds like a macabre twist to the tale of the Pied Piper or Lord of the Flies, but this is northern Uganda in the 17th year of a conflict entering a bloodier phase. After a lull the LRA has slipped back into Uganda from southern Sudan to renew a campaign of rebellion against the government and terror against fellow Acholis. --- Parents are helpless because this is a conflict waged largely by and against their own children, with sons and daughters as young as seven the victims as well the perpetrators of atrocities. The Ugandan army has herded communities of farmers into supposedly protected camps and towns. The few who have risked staying in their villages send their children into town at dusk to avoid abduction by the LRA. Known as "night dwellers", they trudge in silence along dirt roads. The lucky ones carry blankets, food and pots and cluster in the grounds of churches, hospitals and schools. The night the Guardian visits there are more than 1,000 bedding down outside the locked doors of Kitgum's general hospital. In the dark it is easy to tread on a sleeping body but nobody complains. Since the Ugandan army crossed into Sudan and pushed the rebels back into Uganda last year this has become routine, with night dwellers multiplying in recent weeks as abductions increase. --- Atrocities Kitgum's Concerned Parents' Association, which rehabilitates ex-combatants, estimates that 14,000 children have been abducted, with 8,000 escaped or dead, leaving 6,000 still in the LRA. On the walls of the association's office are escapees' drawings. Among them is one of a woman suspended by her right ankle from a tree while a figure beats her with a cane and another lights a fire beneath her head. Another shows severed limbs and a prostrate man bleeding from the mouth. Richard Kinyera, the association's chairman, says these incidents actually happened. And new escapees arrive every day with more stories. At another NGO, the Kitgum Concerned Women's Association, Wanok Constant, 13, tells of being abducted and forced to take part in beating to death another boy who had tried to escape. Patrick Ocaya, 17, still dressed in the wellington boots, tattered trousers and grubby anorak which was his LRA uniform, escaped five years after being abducted from his home in Acholibur. Nervous and avoiding eye contact, he speaks of leading groups of 11-year-olds in looting vehicles. He was so successful the LRA nicknamed him Ambush and made him a corporal. Injured three times, he was also ordered to kill seven people by clubbing the backs of their heads. "Sometimes one blow is enough," he says. "You have to make sure the skull is crushed and the brains come out." He is surprised when asked if he felt sorry for those he helped abduct. "I didn't have pity. They were my orders." There are documented cases of recruits forced to kill relatives, to march over spilled brains and to cook and eat human flesh. The terror serves the LRA because, once implicated, many children consider themselves outcasts. "They become too afraid to flee because they've been made to commit atrocities," says Pietro Galli of the Italian charity AVSI. Younger children are the most trigger-happy. "To impress their peers they become very efficient killers." Lieutenant Okot Santo Lapolo, Kitgum's district commissioner, is uncompromising: his soldiers and their recently acquired helicopter gunships will crush the rebels. The people of northern Uganda, unable to till their fields, destitute and hungry, want nothing more than peace and security - but a military solution means killing their children. For many that is too high a price. Colonel Sam Kiwanuka says some parents provide food to the rebels and withhold information from the army. They know that army statements trumpeting LRA casualties are roll calls of dead children. The inexperienced ones are most vulnerable to helicopter gunships. An amnesty and peace overtures have faltered: some guerrillas fear retribution, others are part of a generation who know nothing but bush war. Father Jose Gerner, a member of a group of religious leaders promoting peace, is close to despair. "The government policy is to destroy them but the LRA is women and children," he says. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,984239,00.html | ||
| Anonymous |
Sex slavery awaits Ugandan schoolgirls By Kathryn Westcott BBC News Online Security forces in Uganda are again hunting for schoolgirls who have been abducted by the notoriously brutal rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army. If they are not found quickly, the girls' fate will likely be that of thousands of others who have been kidnapped over the past 17 years of fighting between rebels and the government. They will become sex slaves for militia commanders. ``` According to New York-based Human Rights Watch some 5,000 of them have been abducted since June 2002. In a report in March, it said the number was likely to be because of the return of the rebels to Uganda after the government intensified a military offensive against their bases in neighbouring Sudan. Children are most vulnerable to abduction at night, when rebels raid villages, looting them for food and supplies. Older female captives are forced to become the "wives" of senior commanders and are subjected to rape, unwanted pregnancies and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and Aids. The younger girls are forced into gruelling domestic work. New males captives are forced to participate in atrocities, such as killing, maiming and intimidating the local population by burning down their homes. 'Night dwellers' The rebels have generally been most active in northern Uganda, where families live in constant fear. Tens of thousands of children, frightened that rebels may strike their homes at night, walk to urban centres for protection during the hours of dark. They are known as the "night dwellers", youngsters who huddle in centres run by non-governmental organisations or on the streets and shop verandas and head back to their villages at dawn. Some, say Lars Skaansar, United Nations humanitarian worker in the northern town of Gulu, walk up to eight kilometres just to find somewhere safe to sleep. "About 14,000 sleep in five centres, including a church and a bus station, every night in Gulu," he told BBC News Online. He estimated that another 10,000 or so sleep with relatives or on the streets and verandas. ``` The Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO) says they have dealt with about 4,000 former child captives since 1997. Stella Ojera, who helps run the centre, says the number of children who have managed to escape in the past year is higher than in previous years, but that is because the overall abduction rate has increased. At the moment, nine children a day turn up at the centre, where they have just over 200 children at any one time. "Many are suffering from severe trauma and need a lot of counselling," Ms Ojera told BBC News Online. "They have been forced to do terrible things. Many are withdrawn, others are very aggressive and others have an overwhelming need for revenge, either against their own people or the rebels." ``` Most are in a weak physical state, either malnourished or exhausted and sore after walking for long distances. Some, says Ms Ojera, are in need of critical medical attention after being caught in crossfire between rebels and government forces. She says that from the centre's experience, most of the children have spent a short period of time with the rebels. But, she says, there are those who have been with the rebels a long time and have become indoctrinated by the aims of the group's leaders. ``` According to GUSCO's Ms Ojera, girls who have been abducted find it harder to escape because they are kept in close proximity to their "husbands", the commanders. "In our experience of the girls who do turn up to our centre," she says, "the women tend to have had an average of three children while they are in captivity. They have been there a long time and, in some cases, their children become fighters. The LRA consider the age of seven a fighting age." ``` http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3019838.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Rebel Mum Dumps Kid In Swamp By Nathan Etengu in Soroti She grabbed her sick baby strapped on her back and tossed it in a swamp in Katakwi without butting an eyelid. The woman rebel of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) showed the savagery of the rebel group classified as terrorists by the US after September 11. The Acholi-speaking woman was among captives the rebels took when they struck Kapelebyong county recently. A teacher, Thomas Aquainus Oreta, who escaped from LRA captivity, said the macabre incident occurred on June 23. He said the unidentified woman picked the two-year old child from her back and threw it into Alaso swamp near Abarilela sub-county. He said he learnt that the sick child had not responded to treatment. Oreta said the rebels were moving with a consignment of drugs looted from health units. He said one captive was in charge of carrying the drugs. “Most of us who were captives lost hope after witnessing the incident. I wondered whether I would survive in the hands of the rebels if they could do such a thing to their own children,” Oreta said. *** He said more than 100 captives, mostly boys, were still in captivity. Oreta, 23, said the captives were divided into groups of seven and placed under the strict surveillance of three armed rebels. “We were forced to carry heavy loads and walk very fast. Whoever failed to walk very fast would be beaten seriously,” Oreta said. http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=8&newsCategoryId=12&newsId=144162 | ||
| Anonymous |
A voice for Uganda's forgotten crisis 04 Jul 2003 07:59:00 GMT Gina L. Bramucci ...the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), shores up its army by abducting children to use as soldiers and young women as sex slaves. In March 2002, with the permission of the Sudanese government, Uganda launched an aggressive offensive against LRA bases in southern Sudan. The result was a fierce rebel retaliation in June 2002. Returning to a pattern of ritual mutilation and killing, the LRA has targeted civilians by burning IDP camps, Catholic missions and health centres, ambushing vehicles, and planting an unknown number of landmines. The army of the LRA is built almost entirely of children, all of them abducted from their homes or schools and then forced to attack and kill their own Acholi people. These young “soldiers” are then placed on the frontlines against the Ugandan army. UNICEF estimates that the LRA has abducted 8,000 people over the past 13 months. “UNLESS the world sees, we have no future” Despite the severity of crisis in Uganda and the humanitarian toll, the war has been largely overlooked or played down at both national and international levels. ... Former Protestant bishop for Kitgum, Mackleord Ochola ... echoed recent concerns from international NGOs and human rights organisations that a military solution to Uganda’s 18-year rebel insurgency will mean the deaths of thousands of children who have been captive by the LRA. Rights groups such as Amnesty International have estimated that 90 percent of LRA “soldiers” are abducted children. ... Farmers in northern Uganda have been cut off from their fields due to insecurity, making food supply one of the greatest concerns for officials at the district level. Meanwhile, severe anaemia, malnutrition rates and related childhood illnesses continue to increase, stressing an already overburdened health sector. With most health centres burned by the LRA or closed due to lack of staff and supplies, regional hospitals are struggling to meet basic needs. Daily inpatient admissions at Kitgum’s St. Joseph’s Hospital average around 600, more than twice capacity of 276 beds. Hospitals have become one of that last perceived safe havens—a gated territory where thousands of parents can send their children to sleep each night. Sanitation quickly deteriorates with a night population that can swell above 5,000 displaced. The situation is ripe for the spread of infection and disease. St. Joseph’s Hospital reported 15 deaths, all of them children, after an outbreak of measles in June. ... “The hard core don’t come back,” said KICWA director Christopher Arwai. They’re “brainwashed” by the rebels, he said. Cut off from outside news, unaware of Uganda’s amnesty law and expecting rejection from families, captives who have stayed longer with the LRA often don’t view escape as a viable option. Girls, who are kept under a stricter watch and are often given to commanders as concubines, return at a rate of one for every seven boys. ... http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/105730669613.htm | ||
| Anonymous |
Uganda's lost innocents Hilary Andersson BBC correspondent in northern Uganda --- 'Made to kill my friend' At a centre for children who have escaped I met a boy called Dennis. He is 14 now but was kidnapped when he was 11 and spent three years in captivity. He had a chubby, friendly face, and was disarmingly open. Like everyone else the night he was kidnapped, he was tied by ropes to other children and marched off to the bush with a heavy load on his head. One day, he told me, the rebel leader gave a random order that no one should eat at four o'clock - a message from the angels. One of the kidnapped boys with Dennis disobeyed and so the rebels selected seven boys, including Dennis, and ordered them to kill the offender. Dennis, fearing for his life, said he picked up a heavy stick and beat him on the head until his skull cracked open and he died. His hands started fidgeting as he told me the story. The boy he had been made to kill was his friend. Forced to eat flesh The girls who are kidnapped are given to rebel commanders when they are 12 years old for rape. The rape can go on for years and many give birth. But it gets worse. A woman called Laweel was told that she and 10 others were to be made an example of as a way of warning the community not to fight the rebels. They were to be mutilated, and sent home alive. So they were lined up in front of their captors. Kidnapped children were told to sharpen the knives and machetes laid there, and one by one the women had their noses, lips and ears cut off. Then they were made to eat their own flesh. I tried to keep looking at Laweel as I spoke to her, so as not to offend her, but it was really hard. Her disfigurement is so appalling that your mind instantly conjures up images of the event. It must be the worst part of it all that now, as she goes through her life, people look they other way. What is happening in northern Uganda could surely be stopped or tempered if the rebel leader was caught. And how hard can it be? The LRA is only made up of a few thousand fighters at the most - and the majority are kidnapped children. Send in a mercenary crack squad, get foreign help - do whatever it takes. But Uganda's government won't because they want to do it themselves and 17 years later they won't admit that they failed. And so again tonight, thousands of Ugandan children will flood into the towns, and probably somewhere, not far off, more will be kidnapped. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3046426.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Bloodied Ugandans recall night of terror By William Maclean 19 Nov 2003 16:00:32 GMT LIRA, Uganda, Nov 19 (Reuters) - The battered survivors of Uganda's latest bloodletting lay moaning or unconscious in a hospital overflowing with wounded on Wednesday after being chopped, bludgeoned or shot by northern rebels. Head swathed in bandages and breathing with difficulty, Raymond Opero, 45, has not regained consciousness since being beaten by rebels who burst into his house in the early hours of Tuesday at Ngetta village, near the northern town of Lira. Six of the veterinary assistant's children were abducted by the rebels who also hacked his eldest son Ferdinal to death. Opero's wife Lilly offered the attackers money to spare their lives and managed to flee as rebels swarmed around their small single storey house. But the attempt to bargain with them fell on deaf ears, her brother-in-law Alphonse Owing said. "'We did not come for money, we came for killing,'" Owing quoted one of the attackers as saying. The raiders belonged to the cult-like Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), notorious for slicing off the lips and limbs of their victims. They killed 17 people in the attack by bludgeoning their heads with wooden sticks, government officials said. But witnesses said up to 53 villagers had been killed in the raid on several villages. For 17 years the LRA has waged war against the government, snatching tens of thousands of children from villages and forcing them to work as frontline soldiers, cooks and sex slaves. The movement numbers at least 3,000 fighters, the bulk of them children. It has never spelt out its demands in public. SLEEP IN THE BUSH Owing, staring sadly at his brother's gashed and swollen face, said Opero's mistake was to spend the night in his house, when the wisest strategy was to sleep in the bush to avoid becoming one of the LRA's victims. "Me and my family were hiding that night and so we were not attacked. When you are in northern Uganda you must be sure to sleep in the bush," he said. Tens of thousands of people living near Lira flock every evening to its pavements and verandas, where they are under the protection of the Ugandan army. The farming town's normal population of up to 100,000 people swells to two or three times that number overnight. On the floor near Opero a man who has been unconscious for a week shivered and turned fitfully as a relative stroked his back in an effort to comfort him. A man wounded in the same attack drew back his gown to reveal a severed penis, blown off by an LRA bullet. "Our soldiers here fear those rebels," said Geoffrey Owiny, 22, a student beaten and left for dead in the attack on Ngetta village. "The army just seems to dodge the LRA. I think we need to start using soldiers from outside (abroad)." The LRA abducted one of Owiny's sisters in 1995 and kidnapped one of his brothers last year. He has seen neither of them since. ANXIOUS VILLAGERS SEEK SHELTER Having spoken sitting up in his bed, Owiny slumped back on a pillow and watched nurses and relatives tend injured patients in the ward, where a lack of space meant some patients had to lie on sheets spread out on the stone floor. Nurses said the 282 bed hospital was treating at least twice that number of patients because of the daily inflow of wounded from night-time attacks that began in the area earlier this year. As the sun begun to set on Lira on Wednesday, thousands of villagers anxiously seeking shelter filled the streets. Angry and apprehensive, they unpacked bedrolls and bundles of belongings on grass verges and pavements. At a rehabilitation centre for former LRA child soldiers, a display of pictures drawn by the inmates recalling their time as LRA captives displayed chilling images of killing and torture. "I am not your friend. My name is Scorpion," read the speech bubble in one child's picture, an image of a senior LRA man thrusting a knife into the head of a child. A million people have been displaced during the fighting. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L19390422.htm | ||
| Anonymous |
Rebel massacre in Ugandan camp Thursday, 5 February, 2004 The army has been unable to halt rebel activity At least 40 people have been killed in an attack by Lord's Resistance Army rebels near Lira in northern Uganda. The rebels raided a camp which is home to thousands of displaced civilians. A missionary described the scene as one of unprecedented cruelty, with the rebels leaving charred bodies and smouldering huts as they fled More than one million people have fled during the 18-year war. The Ugandan army has been saying it is near to defeating the rebels. The LRA, led by Joseph Kony, are known for kidnapping and brutalising young children, many of whom end up fighting for them. The BBC's Will Ross in Kampala says that according to a local official in the camp 47 people were killed, including two government soldiers. Eyewitnesses say more than 100 LRA rebels surrounded Abiya camp and there was an exchange of fire between the rebels and the Ugandan army troops. The rebels then overran the camp, using machetes and clubs, civilians were attacked, and those attempting to flee were shot. The rebels set fire to over 100 huts before fleeing the area. "It was horrific to see these poor defenceless people alone and at the mercy of these bandits. It is criminal," said Catholic priest Sebat Ayala from Lira, a town about 30 km from Abia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3462413.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Rebels massacre Uganda civilians Sunday, 22 February, 2004, 19:48 GMT A rebel attack in northern Uganda has left 192 people dead and many injured, according to witnesses. Carried out by the Lord's Resistance Army, the killings are thought to be the worst in several years. The rebels armed with assault rifles, artillery and rocket-propelled grenades attacked and then set alight a camp for displaced people north of Lira. ***The attack on Barlonya camp, about 26km (16 miles) north of Lira town, apparently took place on Saturday afternoon. As the insurgents surrounded the camp, many people ran to their grass huts, and were burned as the insurgents torched their houses, said legislator Charles Anjiro. ***"It's a hopeless situation, we went there this morning with the Lira district police commander and physically counted 192 bodies. The scene is terrible," he said. ***"I've never seen in my life such a massacre... I saw in one hut alone a whole family members still burning," a Ugandan priest in Lira told the BBC. The LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, are known for kidnapping and brutalising young children, many of whom end up fighting for them. The group is based in lawless areas of neighbouring southern Sudan. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3511109.stm | ||
| Anonymous |
Killed in the name of the Lord In Uganda's bloody civil war, a children's army is responsible for some of the worst atrocities. Callum Macrae reports Sunday February 29, 2004 The Observer Late last Saturday afternoon, about 200 heavily armed members of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) marched into a refugee camp in northeastern Uganda. Their weapons were modern, their uniforms were smart - and almost all were children. The children then indulged in an orgy of bloodletting that left as many as 240 people dead, probably the worst single massacre in the history of Uganda's 18-year war. Barlonyo camp, 20 miles north of Lira, was home to 4,800 internally displaced people from the Langi region, a tiny proportion of the 1.4 million people displaced by this war. It was defended by 30 men and boys with a few weeks training and an AK47 each. They didn't stand a chance. The child soldiers of the LRA, most of whom had been abducted in earlier raids, ordered villagers into their huts and set fire to the thatched roofs. Dozens died. Those who ran outside were shot or bludgeoned to death. ...The LRA is an elusive and problematic enemy. It grew from remnants of a quasi-religious movement in northern Uganda led by a mystic called Alice Lakwena. In 1987, Lakwena launched a war against Museveni's government, which seized power in 1986. Lakwena was defeated within a year and now lives in a refugee camp in Kenya. But in 1987, her nephew, Joseph Kony, declared himself Alice's spiritual successor and launched the LRA. In those days, the LRA had a programme, a combination of Christian fundamentalism and political opposition to Museveni. Today, as one aid worker put it, the LRA 'exists to cause havoc and causes havoc to exist'. The LRA claims to be rooted in the Acholi people of the north, yet the Acholi are their victims. Acholi villages are raided and children stolen, to be brutalised until they become the rebel soldiers of tomorrow. In 2001, the LRA abducted 100 children. Last year, it abducted nearly 9,000. Once captured, the children are forced to watch, or take part in, terrible acts of violence against their fellow abductees. Often they are made to kill their older siblings, creating guilt and complicity - a powerful initiation into their new lives. John Ayura was 18 when he was abducted and forced to march, staggering under a load of looted supplies, to an LRA camp in the bush near Soroti in the north-east. After five weeks, he escaped. 'They made me kill three people; it was the young ones who ordered the killing - that size,' he said, indicating a group of children who had escaped from the rebels. All were between eight and 12. 'They forced us to kill the first one by treading on him. They made us step on him until he died.' The barbarism in the camp was unrelenting. 'Another, they tied him and made him lie down, then told us to beat his head with big sticks until his head was crushed. The next one we killed with pangas, beating his head with the side of the blade. 'I suffer now. Sometimes I dream of them, the people I killed.' But if he had refused? 'They would have killed me.' Another LRA escapee, 13-year-old Merigoreti, smiled sweetly. She, too, is plagued by nightmares. Merigoreti was abducted and made a 'wife' to one of the rebels. She only escaped last month and is still reluctant to talk about him. 'He was a big man and he had a beard,' was all she would say. ...In reality, Ugandans get little protection from the army, the Uganda People's Defence Force. Years of military adventures in Congo have encouraged rampant corruption in the officer class and left foot soldiers exhausted. More serious is that thousands of soldiers simply do not exist. Although the government would never admit it, that has been one of the main reasons for the military's increasing reliance on ill-trained local volunteer militias like those who were supposed to be defending Barlonyo. ..Then Florence said something you hear again and again in this beleaguered town. 'We should forgive them for what they have done. If we kill them, it is also bad.' That is the tragedy of Acholiland. The people here want to forgive because the rebels who oppress them are their children and siblings. Father Carlos Rodriques, a local priest, explained: 'A lot of LRA commanders are in their late teens or early twenties and were abducted perhaps nine or 10 years ago when they were easy to manipulate and brainwash.' ...'More than 90 per cent of the LRA rebels are abducted children. We should not wage war against these people,' said Macleod Baker Ochola, the retired Anglican Bishop of Kitgum, whose daughter was abducted and raped by rebels. Eleven years later, his wife was blown up by an LRA landmine. ...Fr Rodriques is in despair: 'We don't have oil, we don't have mineral resources. This is not a place of strategic importance to anybody. This is why the world doesn't care about us.' http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1158667,00.html | ||
| Anonymous (67.172.158.157) |
Uganda rebels massacre villagers As many as 42 people have been killed in an attack by Ugandan rebels on a village in the north of the country. Fighters from the brutal Lord's Resistance Army attacked Lokodi village on Thursday night, hacking victims to death with machetes and clubs. The army says 25 people died in the village, but survivors say more were marched away and killed elsewhere. On Sunday, the rebels struck a camp for displaced civilians, also in the north of the country. Nearly 50 people may have been killed in that attack, says the BBC's Will Ross in Kampala. In the latest attack, one report suggests rebels clashed with army troops north of Gulu town, about 360km (220 miles) north of the Ugandan capital Kampala, on Thursday evening. The rebels then apparently scattered, regrouping to launch their assault on Lokodi village, further north of Gulu, shortly before nightfall. "At least 25 were killed, eight of them children. They were hacked to death and others were burnt inside their houses," army spokesman Lieutenant Paddy Ankunda told AFP news agency. Our correspondent says survivors speak of more victims being marched several kilometres away from the camp and later killed. They say 42 people died in total. After 18 years of war, people living through the conflict are highly sceptical that a military solution can ever end the violence, says our correspondent. The claims of imminent success against the LRA only seem to increase the frequency and brutality of their attacks, he says. Critics of the Ugandan government's approach say not enough emphasis has been place don talking to the rebels, especially since the LRA is almost entirely made up of abducted brainwashed children. Friday, 21 May, 2004, 21:54 GMT 22:54 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3737633.stm | ||
| Anonymous (205.188.117.20) |
I think it's high time we called in the big guns.It's no shame really. And why are we called The Pearl of Africa if some of our brothers can't leave in peace and harmony yet others have more than they will ever need? I am a human being who fusses alot about small things that do not really matter. What would I do if one of my limbs were chopped off or my nose or ear or my mouth hacked off? Would I have the courage to go on living even when people can't stand the sight of me? And thus for the little we have we should learn to appreciate and say thank you. |
