Good People of the World,
While Konyi formed its Rebel Milita group from reaction of Acholi slaughter in Uganda, this happened where their land was forcefully taken away from them that led to Human Rights Crime, Violation and Abuse with atrocities and genocide committed on Acholi people by Museveni. M23 is equally an engineered conspiracy of Kagame on Congo with the help of Museveni financing to slaughter and exterminate the Congo people to extinct from Congo through invasion with illegal occupation of Congo-land where Kagame and Museveni engaged in doing business with network sharing of Special Business Interest financing the loot on illegal access with unconstitutional unlawful occupation, raping off Congo wealth with its Natural resources against Congo peoples interest and mandate. This behavior spur corruption and impunity to alarming level inside Congo and thereby influencing unwarranted Civil war under conspiracy engineering of both Museveni and Kagame which spread the same theory of human rights crimes, violation and abuse into Kenya where many people were killed and burned alive in Luo-Nyanza during 2007/8 election gone bad. It is sad that Tanzania was recently threatened for attack by Kagame headed the same direction.
It must be known that, Museveni and Kagames acts are equally destroying the fundamental basics for livelihood and survival in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa in the use of Somali Pirating, private army of Militia Al-shaabab, Al-Qaeda and partnering with Chinese invasion in East Africa where they collude with the help of Somali’s Salim Saleh who is Museveni’s brother.
This behavior must be put on immediate stop by the world before worse-case scenario blows out of proportion and necessary legal action taken against President Kagame of Rwanda, Museveni and China inclusively..........without which, third world war is at boiling point about to erupt because people have reached their limit from the ongoing spread of injustices with illegal act of forced Land grabbing in the Great Lakes of East Africa where the whole of Africa is in danger of re-colonization with human extinct.
Something must be done and done
fast…………….and ICC Hague is the only rallying neutral International platform
where fair justice shall be dispensed and the law will fairly be heard for
mutual common interest of all. This is because, big and small, all people are
equal before the law and that the law must not be limited to a small man, but
all people of the world who participated and financed genocide and slaughter of
the poor innocent Africa must be charged and be able to compensate and pay back
what they stole from the poor..........this shall be justice for
all............BUT, reducing it to the local set-up, justice shall be
discriminative and the whole world will never know who the real killer
is.......
It is time the world must know who the enemy
of human destruction is.......they are the ones spreading hate with
environmental pollution and animocity amongst human race. They are the ones who
hate to pay their fair share of taxes that give Government opportunity to serve
all equally........and they are the ones who obstruct Love from permiating
human being to evoke instinct of human morality for sharing and caring in
all aspects of preserving nature to produce what there is in store for mankind
in progressive and successful good life.
Opposite of love is pain and suffering.............and this is the reason people of the world must unite to stop pain and suffering but nurture love for good living.
It is worth it good people...............!!!
It is worth it good people...............!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson &
Executive Director for
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa
USA
email: jbatec@yahoo.com
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The Acholi of Uganda Face Starvation and Genocide
By Peter Okema Otika
Guest Commentator
There is a serious genocide being committed against the Acholi people of northern Uganda.
Hundreds of the Acholi are dying everyday. Children are abducted, women raped, schools closed while the population starves.
The situation is unbearable. The Acholi need your help, and they seriously need it now.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have preoccupied the United States and the rest of the world so much that news about brutalities, massacres and genocide of the Acholi of northern Uganda has always been swept under the carpet.
More people are internally displaced on the African continent than in the rest of the world put together. At the end of 2003, Africa was home to an estimated 13 million of the world’s 25 million Internally Displaced Persons, or IDPs. The Acholi of northern Uganda today constitute over a million of the displaced African refugees.
The surviving Acholi now number only about a million and a half. Hundreds of thousands have been massacred, maimed and displaced by their own government’s troops and by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Today, the impoverished Acholi people cling to existence in some of the most deplorable conditions known to human history.
Since 1986 when ragtag rebel leader Yoweri Museveni took power, the Acholi have known nothing but war, killings, maiming and abductions. In 1987 Museveni’s troops were ordered to kill and plunder the Acholi in the name of searching for rebels opposed to his government.
The government in Kampala used its then National Resistance Army (NRA) to kill thousands of Acholi, shooting them on sight, burning their houses, raping the women and men, and plundered their crops and animals. Government troops blamed the Acholi for alleged rebel collaboration and punished them with inhuman brutalities.
While this was going on, Museveni barred local and international media from the region. This meant the international community would not know of his atrocities. And the international community does not yet know how brutal Museveni has been toward the Acholi.
The government stepped up its terror against the people in 1996 when it ordered all Acholi living in their homes in the villages to vacate immediately and come to concentration camps or face the consequences. Those who delayed were bombed out of their houses using military tanks and helicopters and forced to run to the camps.
At the camps, which now confine more than 500,000 people, the government troops beat up the men, arrest them as rebel suspects and rape the women including girls under the age of 15. The people have nowhere else to go and are not allowed to leave the camp since their homes have already been destroyed by the government that should have been their protector.
As if the terror by Museveni’s troops were not enough on the
people, the rebels of the LRA also stepped up their atrocities against innocent
local Acholi people. The LRA claim that the Acholi are government collaborators
who should be paid in blood.
The LRA rebels have terrorized the Acholi since 1990. They cut off
the legs of the Acholi to prevent them from walking to report the LRA to the
government. They cut off the arms because arms can be used to work for the
government. The LRA amputates people’s limbs to prevent them from working on
Sunday because, they say, it violates the teaching of the Holy Bible. The rebels
claim to believe in running their affairs based on the Ten Commandments.
Worse still, the rebels abduct and turn into soldiers children as
young as 5-years old. Those who cannot carry heavy loads of rebel loot are
brutally killed by other children using machetes and pounding sticks. This is to
instill fear in the children so that they do not think of escaping back home.
The United Nations estimates that the rebels have so far abducted and recruited
over 20,000 children into their ranks.
Numerous non-governmental and humanitarian organizations recently
wrote an Open Letter to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, calling upon him
to intervene in northern Uganda. The organizations, including Human Rights Watch, World Vision International,
Christian Children’s Fund, Catholic Relief Services, American Jewish World
Service and Mennonite Central Committee, implored Annan to rescue the Acholi by
appointing a special UN Representative to the region. To no one’s surprise, the
UN has been reluctant to focus seriously on the issue, and is treating the
plight of the Acholi in much the same way as it did Rwanda during the genocide
in which 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu are believed to have been
massacred.
“We, the undersigned non-governmental organizations working in
international humanitarian and development assistance, human rights, and
conflict resolution, write to express our strong concern about the severe and
deteriorating humanitarian situation in northern Uganda caused by continued
conflict between the Government of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA),”
said the letter, dated May 7.
Numerous individuals and peace loving organizations including a
local coalition known as the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI), have tried to
mediate to bring a peaceful end to the war, but to no avail. This is because
Museveni’s government has always thwarted any effort that came close to a peace
deal, by bombing rebel positions or pulling out the government’s peace team.
Time after time, negotiations have been set back to square one.
The Acholi people still believe that someone, somewhere is willing
to save them from two decades of terror. Sons and daughters of the Acholi are
scattered all over the world, among them university deans, medical doctors,
lawyers, pilots, engineers and members of the armed forces of the United States
and European countries. They expect that the citizens and leaders of these
nations will rally behind them to save the Acholi people back home.
Unfortunately, the United States and Britain have been the major
donors and supporters of Yoweri Museveni since he came to power in 1986. The two
countries have bankrolled Museveni’s annual budgets and armed him to the teeth.
Museveni has used these weapons to terrorize the Acholi population and scare
away political opposition to his government.
It is time that the leaders of the United States and Britain
rethink their support for Museveni, a leader who has failed to provide for the
needs and safety of the citizens of his country. It is time they stopped
financing his economic and military budgets, and call for him to be made
accountable to his people. Museveni has failed to bring peace not only in
Acholiland but also around the Great Lakes of Africa. American and British arms
and funds have allowed Museveni to spread war and terror in Uganda, Sudan,
Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
As you finish reading this article, remember that the Acholi have
been caught between two fires – between the LRA rebels and Museveni’s government
troops. They are calling for your help. Go spread the news to your leaders,
councilmen and women, parliamentarians, congresspersons, your priests and
pastors. Save the Acholi people. It is your turn and calling to act.
Peter Okema Otika is an
Acholi from northern Uganda. He is the President of the African Students
Organization at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, and may be
contacted via email at poo1@pitt.edu
|
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Congo rules out amnesty for top M23 rebels
Pete Jones 6 hours ago
By Pete Jones
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo has ruled out granting amnesty to some 100 senior M23 rebels, it said on Thursday, leaving open the possibility that these commanders could be pursued even after peace talks are concluded.
Talks began in Uganda last week, after the army, backed by U.N. troops, scored rare military successes in August, forcing M23 into negotiations which could lead to the majority of rebels being reintegrated into the army which they deserted in 2012.
"We have a list of around 100 M23 commanders who will not be eligible for amnesty or for reintegration into the national army," government spokesman Lambert Mende told a news conference in the capital Kinshasa.
Rebels ineligible for any amnesty were those who had taken part in multiple rebellions, were on international sanctions lists or had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, Mende told journalists.
"To reintegrate these individuals would legitimate recourse to armed violence and insurrection," Mende said. The rest of the estimated 1,700 M23 rebels would be considered on a case by case basis, he added.
M23's reaction was muted. Spokesman Amani Kabashi said the government's decision would not jeopardise the negotiations.
"The dialogues will continue," Kabasha told Reuters by telephone from M23's base in its heartland North Kivu province.
"We don't even want to reintegrate. If the talks can bring security, then we are all happy to do something else: farm, or teach, to help our population," he said.
The M23 insurgency is the latest incarnation of a Tutsi-dominated rebellion that has repeatedly tried to integrate into the Congolese army, only to withdraw. Its fighters deserted en masse 18 months ago, accusing the government of reneging on a 2009 peace deal.
U.N. investigators and the Congolese government have accused Rwanda of sponsoring the rebellion, a charge Rwanda denies.
The government stance against a blanket amnesty is supported by Mary Robinson, U.N. special envoy to the region.
"We believe that there should not be amnesty for those accused of having committed serious crimes, nor should they be integrated in the armed forces of the DRC," she said this month.
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Uganda
Museveni and Kony Both Should Face War Crimes Tribunal
The LRA which started as a small group after the demise of Odong Latek's Uganda People's Democratic Army (UPDA) and Alice Lakwena's Holy Spirit Movement rebel groups in the late 1980's, has for decades been known for heartless atrocities against innocent unarmed civilians mostly in the Acholi region of Uganda. The rebels are known for abducting tens of thousands of children, killings and brutalities like the chopping of lips, legs and arms of innocent civilians. The rebels' excuses for these atrocities have always been that the civilians are betraying them by reporting their presence to the government army and therefore deserving the atrocities.
To anyone who is unfamiliar with the war in Northern Uganda that started in 1986 when Museveni had just come to power, Museveni's quest to prosecute Kony might sound like a sound idea coming from a responsible person. However, to those who have suffered through the years and experienced atrocities perpetrated by both the rebels and the Ugandan army, the Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF), Museveni is just as criminal as the Kony he is trying to prosecute.
The period 1987-1988 was the worse in the history of the Acholi and it was also at that time that Museveni's army intensified atrocities on the civilians. It was during this period that Museveni declared a state of emergency. He entrusted his commanders like his brother Salim Saleh and Major General David Tinyefunza to help him do the job. Their atrocities included the terrible forcing of Acholi civilians in a pit dug into the earth in a place called Bur Coro. The top of the pit was then covered with soil and grass, which was then set ablaze. The civilians slowly suffocated from the smoke. These sadistic killers have never been punished.
Later, the army exported such atrocities into Teso in Eastern Uganda. In an incident that was also documented by international human rights agencies, people were forced into a train wagon in a place called Amakura and were suffocated. This incident is known in Uganda as the Amakura massacre. To make it more effective and unknown to the international community, Museveni banned media reporting on war and no journalists were allowed to enter the war zone.
By 1990, Museveni had accomplished most of what he wanted; leaving tens of thousands of Acholi dead and thousands languishing in Luzira prison for alleged treason. All these are well documented and still remain fresh in the minds of the Acholi who had trusted Museveni and thought he would treat them as citizens of Uganda rather than his adversaries.
As if his terror was not enough, in 1996 Museveni declared a presidential order that stipulated that all local Acholi living in their homes in the villages be forcefully moved into concentration camps to be surrounded by government troops ostensibly to guard them against LRA rebels' atrocities. Where else in the world but in Africa would the international community today stand for such gross violation of human rights?
Museveni's troops immediately started beating up locals to run to the camps. They burnt down crops and houses of the locals so that they would not go back to their homes. The result was the creation of communal homelessness for over 500,000 people who up to now have no permanent home, and live in some of the worse human conditions in the world. Although Museveni prefers to call the camps "Protected Camps," the locals who live there know it as a concentration camp in which terror reigns and individual freedoms don't exist.
Government soldiers claiming to be guarding these camps are well known for their atrocities on the hapless civilians. They rape the women and have contributed to the increase in the rate of HIV/AIDS — now the highest in that region.
These are just few recorded incidents and yet the majority remained unreported. Similarly, the government is indiscriminately using its Helicopter Gunship and night-guided vision technology to try to spot and kill the LRA rebels. However, the majority of the unfortunate victims are innocent civilians.
Putting these and many other such government-sanctioned abuses side by side with Kony's rebels' atrocities, it is clear that Museveni too should be tried in an international criminal court for crimes against humanity.
By jumping out first to the ICC, looking for an opportunity to prosecute Kony, Museveni is behaving like a member of a band of killers who conspicuously breaks away and starts pointing fingers at his fellow thugs knowing full well that he too will have to face justice.
To heal the wounds and scars of the 18-year old genocide in Acholi, both Kony and Museveni must appear before a war crimes tribunal.
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Warlord Kony ‘in a box,’ U.S. war crimes chief says
Notorious Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony is “solidly on the run,” just one step
ahead of his pursuers, thanks to U.S. training for regional militaries hunting
him, and an aggressive campaign that offers rewards for information leading to
his arrest, a top U.S. official told Yahoo News.
“We’ve got him in a box,” Stephen Rapp, the ambassador-at-large for war
crimes and crimes against humanity, said in an exclusive
interview.
Kony, who leads the Lord’s Resistance Army, drew renewed global attention in
2012 when a 30-minute video about his activities went viral. He has been accused
of kidnapping tens of thousands of children and training them to fight for him
or forcing them into sexual slavery.
In 2005, Kony and some of his top deputies became the first people indicted
for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Most have eluded capture.
“Kony continues to operate in uncharted areas, where there are no roads, and
as one Ugandan commander told me the trees are as thick as broccoli,” Rapp said.
And “he’s not someone that goes on BBC interviews and creates a frequency that
you can track.”
How has the United States worked to change that? In October 2011, President
Barack Obama sent 100 elite U.S. commandos to train regional government forces.
And the government has offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Kony’s capture.
“Just in recent days” the United States has had clues that the international
effort has “gotten very, very close to Kony,” Rapp said Wednesday.
“We’ve got Kony solidly on the run, we’ve substantially diminished his
forces, the operation is carried on in a way that protects the civilians,” he
told Yahoo News.
The War Crimes Rewards Program has put up posters in English,
French and regional languages, dropped flyers from helicopters and broadcast
messages via loudspeakers in an effort to convince populations inclined to
shelter some of the world’s most wanted fugitives to turn against them.
The program won a significant expansion in January 2013, broadening its
mandate to cover more people accused of war crimes, crimes against
humanity or genocide.
The reward amount varies, Rapp explained, depending on whether the
information concerns a “big fish” or a “little fish,” how much danger the
informant faces and other factors.
Over the past four years, the program has paid 14 rewards, averaging $400,000
each, for information about suspects on the run from international courts for
the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, he said.
“Understand: Our reward program only pays for information leading to the
arrest, transfer or conviction of the individual,” Rapp said. “It doesn’t pay
for a dead Joseph Kony … it’s not a dead-or-alive bounty. It’s to have him face
his accusers in court.”
Rapp said his efforts to bolster international support for putting war
criminals on trial take him on the road 220 days a year. “Sometimes it’s almost
like being a fugitive, someone that’s on the run because of the law,” he
joked.
The ambassador at large oversees the State Department’s Office of Global
Criminal Justice and coordinates U.S. policy to prevent — or respond to — mass
atrocities.
The ambassador works with other countries to build support for courts and
“truth and reconciliation commissions” that hold accountable those responsible
and work to pave the way for national unity.
Rapp was a prosecutor in Iowa in the 1990s when he watched — from Cedar
Rapids — the massacres in the Balkans and the genocide in Rwanda.
He decided he needed to be part of the efforts to bring the Rwandan
perpetrators to justice — and ended up winning the conviction of two news
outlets that encouraged the massacre of some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis.
“If you’re a prosecutor, and you’re out there trying to make the world safer
for families and communities, and you see the worst crimes, you want to see a
response to them,” he explained. “You want to see the vicious perpetrators — the
people that would destroy lives, and particularly to do it in horrendous ways —
you want to see those people brought to justice and you want to see those
victims repaired.”
The walls of Rapp’s headquarters on the seventh floor of the State
Department, down the hall from Secretary of State John Kerry’s lavish workplace
suite, have the unmistakable vibe of bureaucracy. One hallway features art
prints you might see on the walls of a not-especially-imaginative college
student.
But they coexist with eye-catching posters of notorious figures like Bosnian
Serb Ratko Mladic, now on trial for the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.
Some of the fugitives have a red “x” over their picture — captured. A doorway
to a classified briefing space carries ominous warnings about safeguarding
secrets. There are carved wooden messages of appreciation for Rapp’s work as
chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone court set up to punish atrocities during
that country’s civil war.
One aide, whom Yahoo News spoke to but agreed not to name or show on camera,
is a fugitive hunter whose office features a corkboard with pictures of
fugitives, where they are thought to be hiding, and possible contacts.
So how does Rapp relax? Or does he?
“I actually find being on airplanes between visits relatively relaxing,” he
said with a laugh. “And watching a movie and reading a book and thinking about
other things, and sitting with friends, and joking about all of the sort of
humorous things that come with working with people of different societies and
different places.”
“I get relaxation out of spending time with the people that share this
passion, and some of its successes," he said. “It’s possible, even in the midst
of these kinds of things, to relax, and enjoy it, and share the joy of being
alive when at the same time you face the horrors of people that have had that
right to life, and decent life, and safe life cut short."
- Joseph Kony
- Stephen Rapp
- crimes against humanity
- International Criminal Court
---------------------------------------------
Thursday, 04 April 2013 20:30
12 Comments
I keenly followed the debate in the press between President Museveni and former FDC leader Kizza Besigye, and the two leaders must be com- mended for their bloodless fight. That said, I was astonished by Museveni’s misrepresentation of the role of the Acholi people in ending the LRA insurgency.
In one of his missives, Museveni wrote that “.....the much-suffering population of Northern Uganda and North-Eastern Uganda ran to IDPs because they were protected by the Army. They did not run into exile. They had confidence in the Army and they knew they were running away from terrorists. In fact, the population was blaming us for not defeating the rebels quickly.”
This could not have been further from the truth. The Acholi were the first people to take up arrows against the terrorists in 1991 with the blessing of government. I want to challenge the president by re- minding him that in 1991 he directed then Minister for the Pacification of Northern Uganda, Betty Bigombe and the former RDC for Kitgum, Mr JB Ochaya (RIP), to recruit youths to protect the civilian population from LRA attacks.
The drive to recruit, what later became known as the “Atero boys”, was one of the most significant aspects of the scorch-earth policy of Operation North, led by Gen David Tinyefuza (Sejusa). Up to 6,000 youths armed with arrows, spears, machetes, and sticks, were mobilized and recruited in Gulu and Kitgum. They were then let loose against the LRA (see “Kitgum forms people’s battalions,” New Vision, 17 May 1991).
This action sucked the entire civilian population in Acholi sub-region right into the middle of the conflict. Predictably, the rebels, saw the “Atero boys” as key to their demise and, therefore, stepped up the terror attacks against the civilians. The NRA/UPDF happily abandoned the vulnerable population, leaving them unprotected against an unprecedented wave of atrocities (see, “Kitgum rebels burn 14 in a hut,” New Vision, 4 June 1991).
Then in 1994, the government accelerated the programme of recruiting the civilians for military work although this time they were labelled as “home guards.” By February, 1995, up to 12,000 Acholi youth had been given two weeks’ basic training, armed and absorbed into the army ( see “Scores killed as NRA hits back,” Monitor, 25 January 1995).
But, like the 6,000 Atero youths be- fore them, the home guards were under- trained and under-armed; they became an easy target for the LRA. In one case, over 200 were killed in Atiak in April 1995. After routing the guards, the LRA announced: “You Acholi are now fighting us, we shall teach you a lesson you will never forget.” The LRA went as far as sending a letter to Bigombe announcing that she had “brought death to the Acholi by telling the people to rise against them.”
Bigombe herself encouraged the creation of the militia groups and did her best to justify the NRA’s abandonment of the militia, arguing that it was the people’s duty to fight the rebels. Acholi elders pleaded with both Bigombe and Gen Tinyefuza for the militia groups to be better armed, but the NRA supplied only a handful of rifles.
The reason why the NRA abandoned the militias is not clear, but many believe it was a strategic calculation influenced by the NRA’s intention to eliminate any up- rising in Acholi. Others attribute the desertion to the NRA’s plan to wipe out the Acholi using Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, as the excuse.
Clearly, the LRA were better-armed. They regularly overcame the militias before terrorising the civilians. The government, through Bigombe, under the directive of Museveni, continued recruiting militias, inadequately arming them and sending them to face the LRA. Clearly, the militias became a labour reserve for the UPDF. When the regular NRA/UPDF soldiers were killed, militias were often assigned their duties.
The NRA/UPDF deaths, on the other hand, were not recorded, eventually leading to the creation of ghost soldiers from which some senior officers are alleged to have pocketed money. Also, the brutal and heavy-handed manner in which Acholi civil society leadership were treated under the guise of eliminating rebel collaborators — accelerated during Operation North.
It meant that no politician, local councillor or civil society leader ever thought of listing the names of the Atero boys/home guards in any way, shape or form making accountability very difficult. To date, no body knows exactly how many children were recruited, how many perished or how many returned alive.
From June 1987 onwards, the rural Acholi not only protested the abuse and neglect that the government troops doled out, but more frequently protested the NRA’s refusal to protect them from the LRA. When the NRA did act, it avoided the rebels and conducted operations against civilians in zones suspected to harbour rebel support.
According to the now defunct Financial Times of June 29, 1987, the Acholi were “like millet between two grinding stones.” In the end, through a marriage of con- venience, the NRA and the LRA rebels came to what was termed by one journalist as a “peaceful coexistence,” rarely engaging each other in combat or making any at- tempt to do so.
So, the president and his government are now able to manipulate facts around Atero boys/home guards/LDUs because these groups did not have any legal recognition and their recruitment was not properly documented. Yes we can say that the Acholi were the first people to take up arrows against the LRA. However, it was out of their own will and conviction, considering that Acholi elders had assured President Museveni in April 1986 that they would support his government for the sake of peace.
The writer is a human rights advocate.
samuelolara@hotmail.com
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Museveni meets Acholi leaders over OPM scam
President Museveni
By Yasiin Mugerwa
Posted Thursday, March 21 2013 at 02:00
Posted Thursday, March 21 2013 at 02:00
In Summary
Yesterday’s meeting is said to have been brought forward after some MPs from northern Uganda launched a campaign to collect signatures to back their renewed call for the region to breakaway from Uganda.
President Museveni yesterday met Acholi leaders to help defuse anger over the abuse of foreign aid meant for post-war recovery efforts in northern Uganda and Karamoja.
The misuse of money meant for the donor-funded Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP), has triggered anxiety in the north at a time when people displaced by more than two-decades of insurgency in northern Uganda are trying to rebuild their lives.
The misuse of money meant for the donor-funded Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP), has triggered anxiety in the north at a time when people displaced by more than two-decades of insurgency in northern Uganda are trying to rebuild their lives.
Yesterday’s meeting, held at the President’s country home in Rwakitura, was a follow-up to a meeting Mr Museveni had with MPs from Acholi which took place at Parliament. In this meeting, the MPs complained that the President had refused to meet Acholi leaders to discuss development in their sub-region and the plight of their people.
Yesterday’s meeting is said to have been brought forward after some MPs from northern Uganda launched a campaign to collect signatures to back their renewed call for the region to breakaway from Uganda and formation of an independent country called Nile State.
Yesterday’s meeting is said to have been brought forward after some MPs from northern Uganda launched a campaign to collect signatures to back their renewed call for the region to breakaway from Uganda and formation of an independent country called Nile State.
The meeting also came on the day the American ambassador to Uganda, Mr Scott DeLisi, said grand corruption was directly linked to the way the country is being governed.
European donors, who cut aid over the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) scandal last year, have started reinstating it but the police investigation into the matter has been hamstrung by interference from senior government officials said to be interceding on behalf of some of the suspects.
When the theft allegations in OPM came up at the meeting held at Parliament, the President reportedly challenged the MPs to produce evidence implicating the OPM Permanent Secretary, Mr Pius Bigirimana, in the scam.
Mr Museveni is said to have maintained that Mr Bigirimana was a whistleblower, a claim the MPs reportedly described as “unfair” and “diversionary”, and pledged protection to the people who report the corrupt in government agencies.
Unlike the previous meeting, the Rwakitura meeting was attended by MPs, district chairpersons and RDCs from Acholi Sub-region. The delegation was led by Aswa MP Reagan Okumu, who is also the chairman of Acholi Parliamentary Group. Sources said PRDP funds, land wrangles, poor roads in the sub-region and compensation for people who were killed and those maimed by LRA rebels were set to be discussed.
Unlike the previous meeting, the Rwakitura meeting was attended by MPs, district chairpersons and RDCs from Acholi Sub-region. The delegation was led by Aswa MP Reagan Okumu, who is also the chairman of Acholi Parliamentary Group. Sources said PRDP funds, land wrangles, poor roads in the sub-region and compensation for people who were killed and those maimed by LRA rebels were set to be discussed.
The MPs also want the government to compensate the people whose property was destroyed during the war.
“We want serious government intervention in the north,” a member of the team, who requested not to be named told the Daily Monitor. “Our people have suffered because of the war and the government intervention has not been satisfactory. Instead of helping our people, OPM officials decided to [eat] the donor funds in the name of our people and the President is silent.”
While the details from the Rwakitura meeting were still scanty, another legislator told this newspaper that the President was to take the Acholi leaders on a tour to appreciate modern farming techniques needed in the fight against poverty.
ymugerwa@ug.nationmedia.com
Simple,let M7 remain with only western Uganda which he loves most to rule
Good question from you. My answer is , there is a third more powerful force that is holding Uganda hostage. It is this force that created Museveni. The same force has kept Buganda away from self rule since the turn of the century and counting. The same force aids and abets Museveni's exceses.
This is great MPS we prefer break away this M7 man has no interest for the North especially for the Acholi sub region in particular.
Mr president Acholi leaders are not there to tour the modern farm of the corrupt leaders,just tell them what plan you have for the north and assure them that you'll punish the thieves or else we break away.
no , they should give the money that was misused to the people of Acholi, Uganda has minister of Agriculture let him to the job m7 is promising to do , m7 can not be an expert and a failed implementer , m7 to instruct and oversee the projects
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Museveni's Link To Acholi Genocide Revisited
admin January 10,2011
The contention that at best the NRA singled out northerners for collective punishment, and at worst extermination, is borne out by self-confessions of high ranking NRA commanders who might have known about the RETHINK strategy in Prof. Whitmore's Museveni Memo.
[Commentary: Uganda]
Recent events inside and outside Uganda has refocused attention on the war in nothern Uganda. They have reignited the debate on possible genocide in Acholi, and the assertions that the patterns of events in the conflict were planned and carefully executed to achieve predetermined objectives of irreparably harming the Acholi society.
Internally, Ambassador Olara Otunnu, a former UN Under Secretary for Children and Armed Conflict, who is also president of a major Uganda opposition political party, the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), has over the years consistently argued that the intersection of the northern Uganda insurgency and the state’s own counter insurgency measures were more than accidental.
Externally, the recent release of an obscure memo allegedly written by Uganda president, Gen. Yoweri Museveni in the heat of trying to consolidate state power after a successful guerrilla struggle, seems to provide the missing link of intent to the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda.
Prof. Todd Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’ cannot be easily dismissed because it supplies a plausible and probable puzzle piece that had so far been missing from the incomprehensible official and popular narratives and patterns of events of the conflict. There are events in the history of the conflict that make no sense on their own, but Prof. Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memmo’ provides a logical context and canvass upon which the whole picture of what unfolded in northern Uganda could possibly be projected.
It is therefore not enough for the state or its agents to dismiss Prof. Whitmore or threaten Ambassador Otunnu with criminal investigations; they must supply contrary evidence that work to discredit the authenticity of Prof. Whitmore’s seemingly important find and undermine the existence of intent as asserted by Ambassador Otunnu.
When the UPC president Ambassador Olara Otunnu spoke out on Luwero, northern Uganda and called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Gen. Yoweri Museveni and his generals, he ruffled feathers within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) cirlces, particularly the power centre of the regime, the army high command. Long time Museveni confidante and coordinator of Uganda’s intelligence services, Gen. David Tinyefuza was quick to warn he would “crush” Otunnu if he continued to question the National Resistance Army’s (NRA) past and roles in atrocities in Luwero and northern Uganda.
Curiously, this is the same general who in 1996 denounced the army and the Uganda government and sought to resign from the forces, accusing the Museveni regime of lacking the ‘political will’ to end the insurgency in northern Uganda.
Appearing before the House Select Committee on the northern war on 29 November 1996, Gen. Tinyefuza declared that the government lacked ‘political will’ to end the northern insurgency. On 5 December 1996, he resigned from the army, claiming he had lost faith in it as a national institution. However, the government could not afford to let him go, perhaps to ensure that what the general knew as a Luwero and northern Uganda war veteran, goes with him to his grave (See Henry Ochieng, Kazoora blasts Gen. Tinyefuza, The Monitor 23 March 2004).
Despite the threats, Ambassador Otunnu has continued to call for truth telling and full accountability for all episodes of crimes of war and crimes against humanity in Uganda’s post independence history. He has particularly singled out the ‘lack of political will’ to end the war in northern Uganda earlier; the horrendous conditions of want imposed on women and children in the concentration camps; and collective punishment metted out against the people of northern and eastern Uganda by Gen. Museveni’s questionable counterinsurgency strategies.
These commissions and omissions by the regime included forcibly driving populations out of their villages into makeshift camps; destruction of crops; burning down homes and food stores; conscription of youths from the camps and deploying them as frontline forces against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); forced labour on highways and byways of northern Uganda; and prohibiting movements in and out of the camps, while not providing adequate protection and necessities of life for inhabitants of the camps who needlessly died of hunger and disease, murdered by the LRA and their children abducted and gangpressed as child soldiers. These actions and inactions followed the scripts authored by the same actors who declared their objectives as such: “ We shall make ‘them’ become like the ensenene insects (grasshoppers); you know what happens when you trap them in a bottle and close the lid.”
Looked at closely, government policy failures and the LRA’s targeting of civilians and children for abduction, maiming, mutilation and killings, fed off each other, strengthening the view that for some strange reasons better than chance and coincidence, both Kony and Museveni found it politically and stratedgically beneficial for the low intensity insurgency to prevail as long as it did in northern Uganda.
For pointing out this uncanny convergence of the NRA and LRA activities that worked to shatter the socioeconomic and moral systems in northern Uganda, Ambassador Otunnu was threatened with charges of criminal libel. When it became clear what he said amounted to nothing criminal, the summons was revised to claim promotion of sectarianism. But clearly, neither crimes could have been committed by the UPC president, since criminal libel cannot be verbal and promotion of sectarianism must target a group of people, rather than an individual like Gen. Museveni.
The latest threats of criminal investigations against the UPC President arise from his comments regarding Prof. Todd Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’, a document that is easy to dismiss yet fits very securely with other puzzle pieces on the enigma of northern Uganda, Joseph Kony and Gen. Museveni (See Otunnu unleashes dossier on alleged Acholi genocide, Daily Monitor, 5 January 2011).
Anyone with open mind and even the most cursory acquaintance with the history of the northern Uganda conflict, will agree with the conclusions of the UPC president and find it hard to dismiss the Whitmore find, which could turn out to be the political and moral equivalence of the anthropological uncovering of fossils linking the great apes to homo sapiens.
Critically looked at, there is abundant evidence to show that the Ugandan state was never interested in the wellbeing of the people of northern Uganda as it should have been. What has so far been missing is clear intent, the link between this state disinterest and the consequences of mass suffering in Acholi, resulting into the complete destruction of the moral, social, family and economic systems of an entire society. Professor Whitmores ‘Museveni Memo’ might just be that breakthrough, plausibly tying together intent, action and consequences.
For years, the government kept the northern population in concentration camps without providing as much as a morsel, while repudiating any notion of declaring the region a disaster area to allow for massive infusions of humanitarian aid. But when a handful of cows perished as a result of drought in the southwestern cattle corridor in 2000, the president and the government were quick to declare the region a disaster area, attracting massive government response in aid. In contrast, people in camps lived on a mug of beans a month per household, barely enough to put body and soul together. By 2005, 1000 people were dying in the camps per week. For every 1000 children born in the camps, 172 were dying, and for every 10,000 children under five years, 3.18 of them died daily in northern Uganda. When one child out of 10,000 children under five years dies every day among any population, it becomes an emergency situation demanding action. But the government never once acted to mobilize its own resources to respond to these situations except what international charities and the UN fraternities were on their own initiatives and discretions were able to provide. Warned of famine and starvation in the north and east, a government minister advised the people there to eat mangoes and lizards.
Perhaps indicating where their interest and burdens of care lay, in December 2006, Gulu RDC Col. Walter Ochora told Frank Nyakairu that President Museveni gave 10 bulls to the LRA as Christmas gifts. Five for Owiny Ki Bul, and another five for Ri-kwangba (See Frank Nyakairu, Kony wants trial in Uganda, Daily Monitor 21 December 2006). This claim was confirmed by the recent WikiLeaks (See Museveni feared plot by Gadaffi to kill him, Daily Monitor, 9 December 2010).
A month earlier, Grace Matsiko had reported that President Museveni had long running contacts with Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti. Mr. Matsiko observed that the link between the president and the LRA leaders ran through Ms. Amelia Kyambadde, the president’s Principal Private Secretary, and Gulu RDC Col. Walter Ochora Odoch. Mr. Matsiko further reported that when he arrived at the LRA tactical headquarters in the DRC forest, he learnt from Vincent Otti that the LRA were expecting “several thousands of dollars” from State House, Nakasero, to buy airtime for their sattelite phones in order to maintain regular communications with State House. Although the LRA and the Uganda government both could not deny or confirm the actual amount that was coming that day, or since when president Museveni or the Uganda government had been giving the LRA finanical assistance, Mr. Matsiko’s “knowledgeable sources” indicated the insurgents had ‘direct access to the president’ as and when they needed to, and that the LRA leadership routinely recieved “cash” or actual airtime from State House Nakasero (See Grace Matsiko, Amelia Kyambadde and Col. Walter Ochora’s Role in Juba Peace Talks Exposed, Sunday Monitor 22-28 November 2006).
There is no evidence to show that the government refuted, denied or contradicted the accuracies of these media reports.
Further evidence of state failure and disinterest to protect and provide for noncombatant populations it had forcibly driven into camps abound. By July 2005, studies had shown HIV / AIDS incidences in the camps were six (6) times greater than the national average. According to Mr. Warren Nyamugosira of the NGO Forum, the normal national average on prevalence of the disease was between 5 and 6.7 %. Speaking at the same workshop, Mr. Benson Ekwee Ocen, the Campaign Support Officer for the same NGO Forum, said the higher rates in northern and eastern Uganda were due to the ‘squalid conditions’ of neglect imposed on the people in the camps (See Timothy Oboth, HIV prevalence among IDPs stands at 35 %, Daily Monitor, 1 July 2005).
Comparatively, of 71 female and 27 male former abductees who returned from Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) captivity and voluntarily tested for HIV / AIDS at Rachele Rehabilitation Centre in Lira, only one person tested HIV positive. Of Another group of 78 former abductees who tested at a rehabilitation centre in Gulu, only 0.7% were found HIV positive. Based on these results, the studies showed that HIV infection rates in LRA camps were lower than the national average. None other than Els De Temmerman ( one half of a Museveni cheerleading Dutch couple and Editor-in-Chief of the state’s own mouthpiece daily The New Vision), recognized that these findings belied president Museveni’s 13 April 2006 claims (at an NGO conference) that 87% of former abducted girls had AIDS; and Gender Minister Zoe Bakoko Bakoru’s September 2004 contention (at a breakfast meeting address to the UN Population Fund and Visiting European Union Delegation) that 50% of the returnees were HIV positive (See Els De Temmerman, Kony tested captives for HIV, New Vision, 29 April 2006).
These findings show stronger corelations between encampment and the virulence of the spread of the disease, than there was between abduction / captivity and rates of infections. Clearyly, there was something abnormal about the patterns of the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in northern Uganda, giving credence to claims that the disease and official disinterest to control its spread was deliberate and may have been used as ‘biological weapon’ to destroy the civilian population in the camps in northern Uganda.
The notion of HIV / AIDS being used as a weapon of war and deliberately spread in northern Uganda is not farfetched. Speaking on the floor of Parliament in 2005, Hon. Jane Akwero Odwong, Gen. Museveni’s own NRM Woman Member of Parliament (MP) for Kitgum, spoke with a ‘heavy heart’ about the mass beatings, rapes and robbery of women, school girls and men by Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) in Padibe camp. These atrocities were committed by the Indian Battalion, who were a mobile force from 91st Battalion. Hon. Akwero Odwong noted that the women were told by the soldiers who raped them that they were on ‘biological warfare’ operations. It is worth noting that after the community and local leaders complained, instead of punishing the culprits, the military leadership transferred the 91st Battalion to Mucwini, perhaps to continue with their biological warfare (See Uganda Parliament Hansard, www.parliament.go.ug/handard1//Document?dateYYYY=2005&dateMM=o4&date=DD=19).
The contention that the northern insurgency provided cover for some sinister political project by the NRM regime or some within it, is not easy to dismiss with a wave of the hand; the deniers must present contrary evidence to undermine these assertions. Clearly, there are plausible grounds to suspect diabolical intent for the war in northern Uganda and why it lasted so long. It is common knowledge that in mobilizing for the NRA insurgency in the 1980s, and in the process of consolidating NRA control over the Ugandan state, President Museveni saw Uganda in north-south adversarial dichotomies, and perceived the NRA victory as a southern triumph over a ‘backward’ “enemy north”.
The rebellion’s mobilizing ideology was based on fanning ethnic hatred against all northerners, symbolized by ‘victory’ songs such as ‘sinadola anyanya’. In her autobiographical accounts of the Luwero war, former Museveni child soldier China Keitetsi, reveals that Museveni’s NRA insurgents were taught to believe northerners were animals who could not feel pain and could therefore withstand all manner of torture and cruelties. Furthermore, in an address to parliament in 2002, the president justified the continuation of the military solution to the insurgency in the north ( despite the toll on Acholi society) on the grounds that the ‘chauvinism of the Acholi had to be destroyed’. By any stretch of the imagination, this could not be understood as descriptions of efforts by a statesman or the state as duty bearer, to bring peace, re-establish law and order, and protect Ugandan citizens regardless of their social or political identities. In addition, confirming probable authenticity of Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’ regarding troublesome northern leaders, Gen. Museveni once remarked that, northern leaders like Cecilia Ogwal, Norbert Mao, Reagan Okumu et al were alive not because they were citizens and rights holders with rights to life, but because of his (Gen. Museveni’s ) generosity that he had not killed them already (See Norbert Mao, Museveni’s unwelcome lullaby in northern Uganda, Daily Monitor 2 September 2004).
This suggests that an original position to kill these leaders existed but for a change of heart or generosity, they lived after all. Furthermore, the notion of exluding or eliminating undesirable northern leaders was first broached during the earliest attempt to settle the northern conflict through negotiations. Caroline Lamwaka observed that, NRA political and military leaders who oversaw the government’s 1986-1988 peace postures deliberately sought to leave marginalise or exclude northern politicians because politicians might prove inflexible and obstruct the peace process between the field forces. In addition young and promising officers like Lt. Obote and Maj. Kilama who were involved with the peace process were killed in unclear circumstances (See Lamwaka, The Peace Process in Northern Uganda 1986-1990, in Lucima, Accord, Issue 11, 2002).
Furthermore, in most instances when president Museveni employed the dualisms of separation between ‘they’ / ‘we’, ‘us’ / ‘ them’, or ‘our people’ / ‘ those people’ in his speeches, these terms denoted northerners and southerners. It is not difficult to see that, what Museveni took as ‘his people’ were southerners, and northerners were either ‘those people’, ‘those killers’, ‘those chaps’ and such permutations. Therefore, it became easy for the ‘us’ and ‘them’ to perceive the other as less human undeserving of the same dignity and respect they reserve for themselves. History has shown that great crimes against a people were preceded by depersonlizing them. For northerners, they were ‘biological substances’, ‘killers’, ‘swine’, ‘ghost’ or ‘anyanya’ in order to first rob them of human qualities so no remorse for them could be contenanced.
The contention that at best the NRA singled out northerners for collective punishment, and at worst extermination, is borne out by self-confessions of high ranking NRA commanders who might have known about the ‘RETHINK’ strategy in Prof. Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’. For instance, at the funeral of Brigadier Eriya Mwine (aka Chefe Ali), Maj. Gen. Caleb Akandwanaho (aka Salim Saleh and possibly Whitmore’s Meteor) revealed that Chefe Ali’s intervention ( perhaps magnanimity?) saved the Acholi from being exterminated by the NRA. Saleh unguardedly declared: “If it was not for Brig. Chefe Ali, no UPC or Acholi would be alive”(See Chefe saved UPCs, Acholi-Saleh, The Monitor, 14 July 1999).
Furthermore, President Museveni himself adopted the line of argument that regarded all northerners or Acholi as insurgents. Confronted by The Daily Nation reporter on reports that government operations in the north and east were destroying food crops, burning down homes and food stores, the president retorted: “I don’t think we are destroying people’s crops. We are destroying rebel crops and stores” (See Daily Nation –Nairobi 26 January 1987).
There is little doubt therefore, that government counterinsurgency policies deliberately targeted civilian populations in northern and eastern Uganda for collective punishments. Questioned on allegations of his army’s abuses against civilians in northern and eastern Uganda, Museveni had this to say: “ You see when you give them (northern and eastern civilian population) a good beating then those who are using them will no longer use them. Since the month of January (1987), we have given them much beating especially in Lira and Kitgum districts. And in fact the week I left (for Yugoslavia) we had given them a good blow in Gulu district. So it is going to settle down” (See New Vision 19 January 1987).
The government perceived the northern and eastern population as a bastion of the UPC, and therefore hostile and left intact pose serious future threats to Museveni’s and NRA consolidation of power northwards and eastwards, for which they were targeted for collective punishments and impoverishments. And when resistance broke out as a result of atrocities committed by Museveni’s army in Buu-Cooro, Mukura and Namukora to mention but three incidents, the population were regarded as rebels or rebel sympathisers and were collectively and severely punished by government troops.
On the other hand, as soon as the government had established some semblance of control over the region, insurgents saw those who participated in the local council administrations as collaborators against the insurgency. Again the population were targeted by the rebels for collective punishments, particularly in Acholi by the LRA. Unbelievably, the government did not do enough to protect or provide for populations it had deliberately removed into camps, where over 2000 people died weekly and LRA routinely raided the camps and abducted children at will. Hence government actions and inactions, and rebel activities against civilian populations intersected to concoct a brew of nothing less than genocide in northern Uganda-‘deliberately inflicting on (a) group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’.
"Speaking Truth To Empower."
Recent events inside and outside Uganda has refocused attention on the war in nothern Uganda. They have reignited the debate on possible genocide in Acholi, and the assertions that the patterns of events in the conflict were planned and carefully executed to achieve predetermined objectives of irreparably harming the Acholi society.
Internally, Ambassador Olara Otunnu, a former UN Under Secretary for Children and Armed Conflict, who is also president of a major Uganda opposition political party, the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), has over the years consistently argued that the intersection of the northern Uganda insurgency and the state’s own counter insurgency measures were more than accidental.
Externally, the recent release of an obscure memo allegedly written by Uganda president, Gen. Yoweri Museveni in the heat of trying to consolidate state power after a successful guerrilla struggle, seems to provide the missing link of intent to the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda.
Prof. Todd Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’ cannot be easily dismissed because it supplies a plausible and probable puzzle piece that had so far been missing from the incomprehensible official and popular narratives and patterns of events of the conflict. There are events in the history of the conflict that make no sense on their own, but Prof. Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memmo’ provides a logical context and canvass upon which the whole picture of what unfolded in northern Uganda could possibly be projected.
It is therefore not enough for the state or its agents to dismiss Prof. Whitmore or threaten Ambassador Otunnu with criminal investigations; they must supply contrary evidence that work to discredit the authenticity of Prof. Whitmore’s seemingly important find and undermine the existence of intent as asserted by Ambassador Otunnu.
When the UPC president Ambassador Olara Otunnu spoke out on Luwero, northern Uganda and called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Gen. Yoweri Museveni and his generals, he ruffled feathers within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) cirlces, particularly the power centre of the regime, the army high command. Long time Museveni confidante and coordinator of Uganda’s intelligence services, Gen. David Tinyefuza was quick to warn he would “crush” Otunnu if he continued to question the National Resistance Army’s (NRA) past and roles in atrocities in Luwero and northern Uganda.
Curiously, this is the same general who in 1996 denounced the army and the Uganda government and sought to resign from the forces, accusing the Museveni regime of lacking the ‘political will’ to end the insurgency in northern Uganda.
Appearing before the House Select Committee on the northern war on 29 November 1996, Gen. Tinyefuza declared that the government lacked ‘political will’ to end the northern insurgency. On 5 December 1996, he resigned from the army, claiming he had lost faith in it as a national institution. However, the government could not afford to let him go, perhaps to ensure that what the general knew as a Luwero and northern Uganda war veteran, goes with him to his grave (See Henry Ochieng, Kazoora blasts Gen. Tinyefuza, The Monitor 23 March 2004).
Despite the threats, Ambassador Otunnu has continued to call for truth telling and full accountability for all episodes of crimes of war and crimes against humanity in Uganda’s post independence history. He has particularly singled out the ‘lack of political will’ to end the war in northern Uganda earlier; the horrendous conditions of want imposed on women and children in the concentration camps; and collective punishment metted out against the people of northern and eastern Uganda by Gen. Museveni’s questionable counterinsurgency strategies.
These commissions and omissions by the regime included forcibly driving populations out of their villages into makeshift camps; destruction of crops; burning down homes and food stores; conscription of youths from the camps and deploying them as frontline forces against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); forced labour on highways and byways of northern Uganda; and prohibiting movements in and out of the camps, while not providing adequate protection and necessities of life for inhabitants of the camps who needlessly died of hunger and disease, murdered by the LRA and their children abducted and gangpressed as child soldiers. These actions and inactions followed the scripts authored by the same actors who declared their objectives as such: “ We shall make ‘them’ become like the ensenene insects (grasshoppers); you know what happens when you trap them in a bottle and close the lid.”
Looked at closely, government policy failures and the LRA’s targeting of civilians and children for abduction, maiming, mutilation and killings, fed off each other, strengthening the view that for some strange reasons better than chance and coincidence, both Kony and Museveni found it politically and stratedgically beneficial for the low intensity insurgency to prevail as long as it did in northern Uganda.
For pointing out this uncanny convergence of the NRA and LRA activities that worked to shatter the socioeconomic and moral systems in northern Uganda, Ambassador Otunnu was threatened with charges of criminal libel. When it became clear what he said amounted to nothing criminal, the summons was revised to claim promotion of sectarianism. But clearly, neither crimes could have been committed by the UPC president, since criminal libel cannot be verbal and promotion of sectarianism must target a group of people, rather than an individual like Gen. Museveni.
The latest threats of criminal investigations against the UPC President arise from his comments regarding Prof. Todd Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’, a document that is easy to dismiss yet fits very securely with other puzzle pieces on the enigma of northern Uganda, Joseph Kony and Gen. Museveni (See Otunnu unleashes dossier on alleged Acholi genocide, Daily Monitor, 5 January 2011).
Anyone with open mind and even the most cursory acquaintance with the history of the northern Uganda conflict, will agree with the conclusions of the UPC president and find it hard to dismiss the Whitmore find, which could turn out to be the political and moral equivalence of the anthropological uncovering of fossils linking the great apes to homo sapiens.
Critically looked at, there is abundant evidence to show that the Ugandan state was never interested in the wellbeing of the people of northern Uganda as it should have been. What has so far been missing is clear intent, the link between this state disinterest and the consequences of mass suffering in Acholi, resulting into the complete destruction of the moral, social, family and economic systems of an entire society. Professor Whitmores ‘Museveni Memo’ might just be that breakthrough, plausibly tying together intent, action and consequences.
For years, the government kept the northern population in concentration camps without providing as much as a morsel, while repudiating any notion of declaring the region a disaster area to allow for massive infusions of humanitarian aid. But when a handful of cows perished as a result of drought in the southwestern cattle corridor in 2000, the president and the government were quick to declare the region a disaster area, attracting massive government response in aid. In contrast, people in camps lived on a mug of beans a month per household, barely enough to put body and soul together. By 2005, 1000 people were dying in the camps per week. For every 1000 children born in the camps, 172 were dying, and for every 10,000 children under five years, 3.18 of them died daily in northern Uganda. When one child out of 10,000 children under five years dies every day among any population, it becomes an emergency situation demanding action. But the government never once acted to mobilize its own resources to respond to these situations except what international charities and the UN fraternities were on their own initiatives and discretions were able to provide. Warned of famine and starvation in the north and east, a government minister advised the people there to eat mangoes and lizards.
Perhaps indicating where their interest and burdens of care lay, in December 2006, Gulu RDC Col. Walter Ochora told Frank Nyakairu that President Museveni gave 10 bulls to the LRA as Christmas gifts. Five for Owiny Ki Bul, and another five for Ri-kwangba (See Frank Nyakairu, Kony wants trial in Uganda, Daily Monitor 21 December 2006). This claim was confirmed by the recent WikiLeaks (See Museveni feared plot by Gadaffi to kill him, Daily Monitor, 9 December 2010).
A month earlier, Grace Matsiko had reported that President Museveni had long running contacts with Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti. Mr. Matsiko observed that the link between the president and the LRA leaders ran through Ms. Amelia Kyambadde, the president’s Principal Private Secretary, and Gulu RDC Col. Walter Ochora Odoch. Mr. Matsiko further reported that when he arrived at the LRA tactical headquarters in the DRC forest, he learnt from Vincent Otti that the LRA were expecting “several thousands of dollars” from State House, Nakasero, to buy airtime for their sattelite phones in order to maintain regular communications with State House. Although the LRA and the Uganda government both could not deny or confirm the actual amount that was coming that day, or since when president Museveni or the Uganda government had been giving the LRA finanical assistance, Mr. Matsiko’s “knowledgeable sources” indicated the insurgents had ‘direct access to the president’ as and when they needed to, and that the LRA leadership routinely recieved “cash” or actual airtime from State House Nakasero (See Grace Matsiko, Amelia Kyambadde and Col. Walter Ochora’s Role in Juba Peace Talks Exposed, Sunday Monitor 22-28 November 2006).
There is no evidence to show that the government refuted, denied or contradicted the accuracies of these media reports.
Further evidence of state failure and disinterest to protect and provide for noncombatant populations it had forcibly driven into camps abound. By July 2005, studies had shown HIV / AIDS incidences in the camps were six (6) times greater than the national average. According to Mr. Warren Nyamugosira of the NGO Forum, the normal national average on prevalence of the disease was between 5 and 6.7 %. Speaking at the same workshop, Mr. Benson Ekwee Ocen, the Campaign Support Officer for the same NGO Forum, said the higher rates in northern and eastern Uganda were due to the ‘squalid conditions’ of neglect imposed on the people in the camps (See Timothy Oboth, HIV prevalence among IDPs stands at 35 %, Daily Monitor, 1 July 2005).
Comparatively, of 71 female and 27 male former abductees who returned from Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) captivity and voluntarily tested for HIV / AIDS at Rachele Rehabilitation Centre in Lira, only one person tested HIV positive. Of Another group of 78 former abductees who tested at a rehabilitation centre in Gulu, only 0.7% were found HIV positive. Based on these results, the studies showed that HIV infection rates in LRA camps were lower than the national average. None other than Els De Temmerman ( one half of a Museveni cheerleading Dutch couple and Editor-in-Chief of the state’s own mouthpiece daily The New Vision), recognized that these findings belied president Museveni’s 13 April 2006 claims (at an NGO conference) that 87% of former abducted girls had AIDS; and Gender Minister Zoe Bakoko Bakoru’s September 2004 contention (at a breakfast meeting address to the UN Population Fund and Visiting European Union Delegation) that 50% of the returnees were HIV positive (See Els De Temmerman, Kony tested captives for HIV, New Vision, 29 April 2006).
These findings show stronger corelations between encampment and the virulence of the spread of the disease, than there was between abduction / captivity and rates of infections. Clearyly, there was something abnormal about the patterns of the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in northern Uganda, giving credence to claims that the disease and official disinterest to control its spread was deliberate and may have been used as ‘biological weapon’ to destroy the civilian population in the camps in northern Uganda.
The notion of HIV / AIDS being used as a weapon of war and deliberately spread in northern Uganda is not farfetched. Speaking on the floor of Parliament in 2005, Hon. Jane Akwero Odwong, Gen. Museveni’s own NRM Woman Member of Parliament (MP) for Kitgum, spoke with a ‘heavy heart’ about the mass beatings, rapes and robbery of women, school girls and men by Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) in Padibe camp. These atrocities were committed by the Indian Battalion, who were a mobile force from 91st Battalion. Hon. Akwero Odwong noted that the women were told by the soldiers who raped them that they were on ‘biological warfare’ operations. It is worth noting that after the community and local leaders complained, instead of punishing the culprits, the military leadership transferred the 91st Battalion to Mucwini, perhaps to continue with their biological warfare (See Uganda Parliament Hansard, www.parliament.go.ug/handard1//Document?dateYYYY=2005&dateMM=o4&date=DD=19).
The contention that the northern insurgency provided cover for some sinister political project by the NRM regime or some within it, is not easy to dismiss with a wave of the hand; the deniers must present contrary evidence to undermine these assertions. Clearly, there are plausible grounds to suspect diabolical intent for the war in northern Uganda and why it lasted so long. It is common knowledge that in mobilizing for the NRA insurgency in the 1980s, and in the process of consolidating NRA control over the Ugandan state, President Museveni saw Uganda in north-south adversarial dichotomies, and perceived the NRA victory as a southern triumph over a ‘backward’ “enemy north”.
The rebellion’s mobilizing ideology was based on fanning ethnic hatred against all northerners, symbolized by ‘victory’ songs such as ‘sinadola anyanya’. In her autobiographical accounts of the Luwero war, former Museveni child soldier China Keitetsi, reveals that Museveni’s NRA insurgents were taught to believe northerners were animals who could not feel pain and could therefore withstand all manner of torture and cruelties. Furthermore, in an address to parliament in 2002, the president justified the continuation of the military solution to the insurgency in the north ( despite the toll on Acholi society) on the grounds that the ‘chauvinism of the Acholi had to be destroyed’. By any stretch of the imagination, this could not be understood as descriptions of efforts by a statesman or the state as duty bearer, to bring peace, re-establish law and order, and protect Ugandan citizens regardless of their social or political identities. In addition, confirming probable authenticity of Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’ regarding troublesome northern leaders, Gen. Museveni once remarked that, northern leaders like Cecilia Ogwal, Norbert Mao, Reagan Okumu et al were alive not because they were citizens and rights holders with rights to life, but because of his (Gen. Museveni’s ) generosity that he had not killed them already (See Norbert Mao, Museveni’s unwelcome lullaby in northern Uganda, Daily Monitor 2 September 2004).
This suggests that an original position to kill these leaders existed but for a change of heart or generosity, they lived after all. Furthermore, the notion of exluding or eliminating undesirable northern leaders was first broached during the earliest attempt to settle the northern conflict through negotiations. Caroline Lamwaka observed that, NRA political and military leaders who oversaw the government’s 1986-1988 peace postures deliberately sought to leave marginalise or exclude northern politicians because politicians might prove inflexible and obstruct the peace process between the field forces. In addition young and promising officers like Lt. Obote and Maj. Kilama who were involved with the peace process were killed in unclear circumstances (See Lamwaka, The Peace Process in Northern Uganda 1986-1990, in Lucima, Accord, Issue 11, 2002).
Furthermore, in most instances when president Museveni employed the dualisms of separation between ‘they’ / ‘we’, ‘us’ / ‘ them’, or ‘our people’ / ‘ those people’ in his speeches, these terms denoted northerners and southerners. It is not difficult to see that, what Museveni took as ‘his people’ were southerners, and northerners were either ‘those people’, ‘those killers’, ‘those chaps’ and such permutations. Therefore, it became easy for the ‘us’ and ‘them’ to perceive the other as less human undeserving of the same dignity and respect they reserve for themselves. History has shown that great crimes against a people were preceded by depersonlizing them. For northerners, they were ‘biological substances’, ‘killers’, ‘swine’, ‘ghost’ or ‘anyanya’ in order to first rob them of human qualities so no remorse for them could be contenanced.
The contention that at best the NRA singled out northerners for collective punishment, and at worst extermination, is borne out by self-confessions of high ranking NRA commanders who might have known about the ‘RETHINK’ strategy in Prof. Whitmore’s ‘Museveni Memo’. For instance, at the funeral of Brigadier Eriya Mwine (aka Chefe Ali), Maj. Gen. Caleb Akandwanaho (aka Salim Saleh and possibly Whitmore’s Meteor) revealed that Chefe Ali’s intervention ( perhaps magnanimity?) saved the Acholi from being exterminated by the NRA. Saleh unguardedly declared: “If it was not for Brig. Chefe Ali, no UPC or Acholi would be alive”(See Chefe saved UPCs, Acholi-Saleh, The Monitor, 14 July 1999).
Furthermore, President Museveni himself adopted the line of argument that regarded all northerners or Acholi as insurgents. Confronted by The Daily Nation reporter on reports that government operations in the north and east were destroying food crops, burning down homes and food stores, the president retorted: “I don’t think we are destroying people’s crops. We are destroying rebel crops and stores” (See Daily Nation –Nairobi 26 January 1987).
There is little doubt therefore, that government counterinsurgency policies deliberately targeted civilian populations in northern and eastern Uganda for collective punishments. Questioned on allegations of his army’s abuses against civilians in northern and eastern Uganda, Museveni had this to say: “ You see when you give them (northern and eastern civilian population) a good beating then those who are using them will no longer use them. Since the month of January (1987), we have given them much beating especially in Lira and Kitgum districts. And in fact the week I left (for Yugoslavia) we had given them a good blow in Gulu district. So it is going to settle down” (See New Vision 19 January 1987).
The government perceived the northern and eastern population as a bastion of the UPC, and therefore hostile and left intact pose serious future threats to Museveni’s and NRA consolidation of power northwards and eastwards, for which they were targeted for collective punishments and impoverishments. And when resistance broke out as a result of atrocities committed by Museveni’s army in Buu-Cooro, Mukura and Namukora to mention but three incidents, the population were regarded as rebels or rebel sympathisers and were collectively and severely punished by government troops.
On the other hand, as soon as the government had established some semblance of control over the region, insurgents saw those who participated in the local council administrations as collaborators against the insurgency. Again the population were targeted by the rebels for collective punishments, particularly in Acholi by the LRA. Unbelievably, the government did not do enough to protect or provide for populations it had deliberately removed into camps, where over 2000 people died weekly and LRA routinely raided the camps and abducted children at will. Hence government actions and inactions, and rebel activities against civilian populations intersected to concoct a brew of nothing less than genocide in northern Uganda-‘deliberately inflicting on (a) group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’.
"Speaking Truth To Empower."
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Uganda Killer,Yoweri Museveni
Fellow Ugandans,for the fifth time in a single month, the brutal tyrant has
once again with no mercy, killed
and humiliated our Brothers and Sisters .
Tyrant Yoweri Museveni has resorted to Murder as a way to impose himself upon our people. The thug is forcing Ugandans to love him while at the same time, he has no love for them.
Thus, the cold blooded tyrant lacks patriotism for the country that natured him and has instead resorted to the narrow conception that Ugandans are wrong and he’s right.
The psychotic tyrant has proven to us that life without power will always lead to mass murder and there’s evidence for this, from Buganda, Acholi, Karamoja,Rwanda and Congo.
Every time tyrant Museveni lost control over people that didn’t love him,he went on a killing frenzy that ended up in a genocide.
History has taught us that, cold blooded tyrants like Museveni are masters at decimating propaganda that turns the victims of their brutality into the guilty party.
Before modeling themselves into a cult figure that is feared,they franchise the tools of brutality among their family members while forgetting that, no person can love a man they fear.
Thus, the victims are always reminded of how they were saved from dictatorship and political bankruptcy. Yes, its very understandable why many Ugandans have taken long to realise that the impostor in their state house was indeed a cold blooded killer because they were made to feel guilty.
The way we understand the psychotic head of Yoweri Museveni, Of-late its become more difficult for him to murder Acholi, Karamojongs and Congolese, and that’s why its imperative we have to stop him before he turns Buganda to year Zero, because that’s what has been his fantasy for a very….long time.
Thus, his an opportunistic murderer that is always looking for new territory to deploy killers.
Fellow Ugandans, today your all guerrillas and freedom fighters, that are fighting within your own environments so that your people can be Free.
Its your right to preserve your democratic rights and to struggle for genuine Liberation in any way you consider necessary.
OPPRESSORS WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE PEOPLE!!!
Admin says:
Tyrant Yoweri Museveni has resorted to Murder as a way to impose himself upon our people. The thug is forcing Ugandans to love him while at the same time, he has no love for them.
Thus, the cold blooded tyrant lacks patriotism for the country that natured him and has instead resorted to the narrow conception that Ugandans are wrong and he’s right.
The psychotic tyrant has proven to us that life without power will always lead to mass murder and there’s evidence for this, from Buganda, Acholi, Karamoja,Rwanda and Congo.
Every time tyrant Museveni lost control over people that didn’t love him,he went on a killing frenzy that ended up in a genocide.
History has taught us that, cold blooded tyrants like Museveni are masters at decimating propaganda that turns the victims of their brutality into the guilty party.
Before modeling themselves into a cult figure that is feared,they franchise the tools of brutality among their family members while forgetting that, no person can love a man they fear.
Thus, the victims are always reminded of how they were saved from dictatorship and political bankruptcy. Yes, its very understandable why many Ugandans have taken long to realise that the impostor in their state house was indeed a cold blooded killer because they were made to feel guilty.
The way we understand the psychotic head of Yoweri Museveni, Of-late its become more difficult for him to murder Acholi, Karamojongs and Congolese, and that’s why its imperative we have to stop him before he turns Buganda to year Zero, because that’s what has been his fantasy for a very….long time.
Thus, his an opportunistic murderer that is always looking for new territory to deploy killers.
No one is safe from Murderer Yoweri Museveni
Fellow Ugandans, today your all guerrillas and freedom fighters, that are fighting within your own environments so that your people can be Free.
Its your right to preserve your democratic rights and to struggle for genuine Liberation in any way you consider necessary.
OPPRESSORS WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE PEOPLE!!!
Admin says:
Our team picked up today this aerial photo during their suveillance on the movement of the Tyrant’s notorious son, Major Muhoozi Kainerugaba. The team first thought it was some cumulus cloud caused by the teargassing of the tyrants thugs. However,after some pain taking analysis it was not, but some chemicals being distributed systematically.
Its not possible for cumulus clouds to be that low and very concentrated above lower terrains .
The team’s conclusion was that the tyrant could be using some nasty gas to kill the residents of that area in a very slow and calculative methodology.
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Donors Must Pressure Museveni to End the War in the North, International Agencies DemandBy Linda Frommer
Washington, DC
The PerspectiveAtlanta, Georgia
November 12, 2002
The Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni must bring about an immediate end to the war in Northern Uganda, international relief agencies and human rights organizations are now saying in a series of reports that are for the first time bringing the 17-year war in Northern Uganda to the attention of the international community. In a report to be presented to Uganda's international donors, which have lavished aid and debt breaks on the country since Museveni came to power in 1986, aid agencies have presented the case that the "seemingly endless war" in Northern Uganda has cost the country "$1.3 billion. It [the government] must do whatever is necessary to resolve the conflict peacefully."
For the past 17 years, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has waged war against the Museveni government, with the primary point of attack of the LRA being Kony's community of origin: the Acholi people of the three districts of Kitgum, Gulu, and Pader. It is estimated that in the past ten years, the LRA has abducted more than 10,000 children, killing many of them and forcing others to become child-killer-soldiers or sex slaves of the LRA commanders. Within Northern Uganda, 500,000 people languish in camps for the internally displaced, without clean water, adequate food or sanitation, and without medical services. The economy of the north has been completely destroyed, and the Acholi community has been robbed of its children, its means of livelihood, and its dignity by a combination of wanton violence on the part of the LRA and the apparent incapacity of the Ugandan government to protect them.
The report that the donors will receive in their meeting Dec. 11-13 in Kampala was produced by the Coalition of Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU), which includes Britain's Oxfam International, Care International, the Danish Save the Children Fund, and World Vision. The report, titled "The Net Economic Cost of the Conflict in the Acholiland Subregion of Uganda," notes that
The war in the north has:
- Cost $367 million in defense spending.
- Left an estimated 23, 520 people dead,
- Displaced more than 1 million
- Left thousands of Acholis maimed.
- Disrupted incomes from crop production, resulting in a loss of $212 million,
- Reduced tourism earnings for Uganda by $185 million,
- Increased medical costs by $138 million.
For more than a decade the Ugandan government did nothing against the LRA, except to force hundreds of thousands of people of the three districts in the north into so-called protected villages, where they lack all means of livelihood and are ravaged by disease and also be continuing attacks from the LRA. Pabbo camp, the larged IDP camp, has been attacked by the LRA 17 times in the past 24 months, leaving 44 people killed, 40 people abducted, and 774 huts burnt.
In February of this year, based on an agreement with Sudan, where the LRA had found safe haven from 1994 to 1999, the Ugandan military was permitted to strike deep into southern Sudan against the LRA camps. The result, however, has been devastating to the Acholi community. As the LRA has been hounded in southern Sudan, it has descended with a vengeance into Northern Uganda to launch devastating acts of retribution against the Acholi community for its lack of support for the LRA war against Museveni. The attacks peaked in September and then again in the second and third week of October, when the LRA attacked Agago County in Pader district October 22 through 24, burning 50 people alive and abducting scores of children. Gulu MP Reagan Okumu reports that in the last three months, the LRA has killed 670 Acholi civilians, abducted 2,104 people, and burnt 3,139 huts, 156 vehicles, and 43 motor vehicles. "This is the highest peak I can think of in the history of child abductions in Northern Uganda," Richard Oneka of the Gulu Support the Children Organization (GUSCO) reported Oct. 31, estimating that 4,000 Acholi children have been abducted since June, when the LRA was forced southward out of Sudan.
While the Ugandan army states that it is actively pursuing Kony forces in southern Sudan, it is not acting aggressively against the LRA in Northern Uganda. In an effort to change the view that the UPDF is not actively pursuing the LRA inside the country, the government Nov. 8 arrested three UPDF majors, a captain, and four lieutenants for allegedly failing to repulse Kony rebels when their units came under attack.
But the pattern of the war over the last 17 years shows that the failure to respond aggressively to LRA rebels inside Uganda is not deviant UPDF behavior. In a briefing paper on Northern Uganda released at the end of October, Human Rights Watch (HRW) charged that both the LRA and the Ugandan government have increased their abuses against the civilians of Northern Uganda in recent months. "The Ugandan government has responded to the increased LRA activity by ordering on Oct. 3 tens of thousands of people to leave their villages within 48 hours and gather in towns and displacement camps. On October 6, the army started bombing the region that was to be evacuated. Local sources have reported that some civilians have died in the bombings." HRW further stated that the forced herding of Acholi civilians into camps with extremely poor conditions violates Protocol II of the Geneva Convention. "The standards of the Geneva Convention have clearly been violated by the Ugandan government," HRW stated.
The U.S.-based Refugees International has gone a step further and called upon the Uganda government to immediately end Operation Fist and fully commit to negotiations with the LRA even possibly under the auspices of the United Nations. "The world is not aware that half a million people are displaced. This is a humanitarian crisis. There's a generation of people who have lived in IDP camps." Quoting a UN official, the RI states: "But donors don't want to portrary Uganda as another African country that is going down the drain. Because they give so much to Uganda, donors have a political motivation to make sure that it is seen as a success story." Donors should publicly call for an end to Operation Fist and pressure the government of Uganda to commit to negotiations."
The LRA has made it known that it will not negotiate with Museveni except with the mediation of a neutral third party. Nevertheless, if the Uganda government wanted to end the war, political observers believe it could easily do so. The LRA does not seek power or territory, but guarantees of amnesty. Many former child-soldiers of the LRA have been rehabilitated and been reunited with their families and reintegrated into the community-despite their past crimes against that community. But the war has served several purposes for the Museveni government. It has politically enabled the Ugandan military to be militarily present in southern Sudan, where it can continue its support the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army of John Garang. The war enables him to paint his political opponents with a "terrorist" brush, as Musevei has charged his primary rival in the last elections, Dr. Kizza Besigye, as working with the LRA. The war continues the decimation of the Acholi people, who were the primary base of support for the government Museveni overthrew in 1986. Even more importantly, the war functions as a point of violence that blocks Uganda's from becoming a democratic country in which organized political opposition is permitted-an eventuality Museveni fears the most.
Acholi community elders and religious leaders have been unanimous and relentless in their pursuit of peace-coming under the attack of the Museveni government for just that reason. But as long as donors continue to tolerate the devastation of Northern Uganda at the hands of both the LRA and the UPDF, there is little chance that Museveni will enter into serious negotiations. Without direct and forceful pressure from donors, the war-and the continued genocide of the Acholi people-will continue.
© The PerspectiveP.O. Box 450493
Atlanta, GA 31145
Website: www.theperspective.org
E-mail: editor@theperspective.org
