Crime Against Humanity   Update:   

 

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE

Uganda, Jan 5: Victims of Yoweri Museveni’s reign of terror - (May they RIP)

The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" , Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"

Human Rights Watch-New York, USA, Jan 20: In its 2006 annual report, the NewYork based Human Rights Watch body says Uganda failed to make progress on human rights and its international reputation suffered in 2005. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/uganda12284_txt.htm HRW also says, Uganda’s military courts must respect the jurisdiction of the nation’s superior civilian courts, Human Rights Watch said today. January 19, 2006    Press Release Uganda: Military Must Bow to Civilian Courts   

Human Rights Watch-New York, USA Nov 24: The New York based Human Rights Watch has called on the U.S Bush Administration to halt the accelerating political repression in Uganda. In a statement released on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch says the U.S Should Cut Relations With Uganda government forces who stormed Courthouse last week in Uganda’s capital Kampala. Human Rights Watch also says, the Ugandan government should reverse its ban on speech and demonstrations linked to the trial of the main opposition candidate for president, Dr. Kizza Besigye, and end its intimidation of the courts. Human Rights Watch Country Researcher for Uganda, Rone said, “Opposition supporters in Uganda have a right to peacefully protest any aspect of the judicial proceedings. They also have the right to demonstrate in support of their presidential candidate’s freedom.” http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/24/uganda12089.htm  

New York, USA Dec13: Uganda’s Electoral Commission Must Uphold Presumption of Innocence
Fairness of March Presidential Elections at Stake - Uganda’s Electoral Commission should uphold the presumption of innocence and objectively consider whether to permit the indicted opposition leader Dr. Kizza Besigye to run for president, Human Rights Watch said today. Nominations for the 2006 presidential candidates are scheduled to take place on December 14 and 15. December 12, 2005, Press Release Printer friendly version

The International Criminal Justice: Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo - (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda) - Summary of the Judgment of 19 December 2005 - NEW Press Release 2005/26 (htm) NEW JUDGMENT OF 19 DECEMBER 2005 (Pdf) , NEW SUMMARY 2005/3

Resolution on the genocide in Northern Uganda, Made to the Episcopal Diocese of New York, Meeting in the cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York, NY, November 19, 2005. By Rt. Rev. Benoni Ogwal-Abwang, Rector, St Simon the Cyrenian, New Rochelle, NY.

Bishop Sisk, Members of the Convention, Visitors, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Thank you for accepting that Episcopal Diocese of New York identifies with the suffering people of God in Northern Uganda, especially the Acholi people. I was Bishop of Northern Uganda Diocese that has been engulfed in catastrophic suffering these past 19 years. This is also the home of Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, African 20th Century Martyr honored at Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The ----(what n#?) General Convention of the Episcopal Church 2003 resolved that February 17 be observed as the Feast of Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, the Martyr.

Archbishop Janani Luwum was not only my spiritual father and mentor, he also wedded Alice and I and in 1974, I succeeded him as Bishop of Northern Uganda when he was elected Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga Zaire. Buried in his childhood home of Mucwini in present day Kitgum Diocese carved out of the mother Northern Uganda Diocese, Archbishop Janani Luwum’s grave is not far from the scene of an LRA massacre of innocent civilians, women and children in Mucwini a couple years ago. While Archbishop Janani Luwum the Martyr is greatly honored and admired abroad, his grave lies desolate among his forgotten Acholi people. The landscape of Acholi, Janani Luwum’s homeland, is drenched with blood and tears of women and children. Evil spirits of death and destruction hiss over the land. Starvation, disease, HIV/AIDS stalk the children and young women like the apocalyptic horsemen in the Book of Revelations.

I therefore ask you all, Christian brothers and sisters, to weep with the people of Northern Uganda, especially the Acholi, who have been weeping for the last 19 years. I also ask you to say a prayer for them. Though rejected, abandoned and have suffered alone these past 19 years, they are still God’s people. I know my people’s continued suffering since the regime of Idi Amin is sharing in the martyrdom of their son Janani Luwum, Archbishop-Martyr, whose bones lie in their midst. The Acholi have cried these 19 years: “How long, O Lord, will you forget us forever?”

A brief situation background

The ongoing war in Northern Uganda has its roots in the mid 1980s when Yoweri Museveni began a rebellion against the Government of Uganda after he was defeated in the General Elections of December 1980. In 1985, top commanders of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA), late Gen Tito Okello Lutwa and Basilio Olara Okello, both Acholi, overthrew the elected Government of the late Dr Milton Obote (RIP). They began Peace Negotiations with Yoweri Museveni and other rebel leaders in hope of ending the cycles of violence in post-independent Uganda. A Peace Agreement was reached, signed and witnessed by Daniel arap Moi, then President of the Republic of Kenya, on December 17, 1985.

Under the Peace Agreement, Yoweri Museveni was to be Vice President to General Tito Okello Lutwa until elections were organized. Unfortunately even before the ink dried on the Agreement, Yoweri Museveni stormed Kampala and overthrew the Okello Government on January 25, 1986 and became President of Uganda. He brought the whole country under the control of his army, the National Resistance Army (NRA), by April 1986. Many Acholi former UNLA soldiers fled into Southern Sudan although some remained in Northern Uganda.

Yoweri Museveni’s treachery in negotiating and then trashing the Nairobi Peace Agreement, plus the previous memory of massacres of Acholi and Langi soldiers by Idi Amin in 1971, forced many of the former Acholi UNLA soldiers to re-group and fight in self- defense, especially after Museveni’s NRA started revenge killings, human rights abuses and atrocities in Northern Uganda, for example, the Namukora Massacre in late Gen Tito Okello’s home village. While fighting the Obote Government in 1980-85 in Central Uganda, Yoweri Museveni’s guerilla propaganda pinned all the killings, massacres and human rights abuses on Dr Milton Obote’s Army, particularly on the Acholi who constituted a major percentage in the UNLA. That is how the Acholi were marked and stigmatized ever since.

But now contrary information has begun to surface from some of the very people who were with Yoweri Museveni in the bush. They are some of the people who have disagreed with him politically, especially with his Life Presidency plans because he wants to stand again in the general elections planned for March 2006. By January 2006, Museveni will have been in power for 20 years! Some of those who were with him in the bush have begun to admit publicly that it was not only Obote’s Government forces, but also Museveni’s guerilla army, the NRA, that committed atrocities in the Luwero Triangle.

And yet soon after he took over power, Museveni relished in the display of thousands of skulls of people killed in Luwero as if, during the bush war, the skulls were carefully preserved for just such a display. The skulls were publicly displayed on the main roadside leading to Northern Uganda ostensibly to show the evils of Milton Obote’s army. But now in hindsight, it seems the skulls were displayed strategically to demonize Northerners, especially the Acholi, and set them up for revenge killings and extinction so that the unfolding genocide in the IDP Camps and lack of protection from LRA attacks are nothing but the ‘final solution’. 

Personal encounter with President Museveni

The general population of Northern Uganda, including Acholi, had accepted the change of Government that brought President Museveni to power. The people were ready to work with the new NRA military Government but President Museveni and the NRA Government did not trust the Acholi. When the lawlessness and human rights abuses by both the NRA and former Acholi UNLA soldiers got worse, I met with President Museveni on December 24, 1986 in Gulu. Through a Memorandum, I advised him to meet the Acholi people with a handshake but not with guns. The Acholi had a painful community memory of Idi Amin who killed thousands of our people including soldiers who were first disarmed before they were butchered.

I encouraged Museveni to consult with Elders and Religious Leaders who were supportive of Peace in Northern Uganda. President Museveni refused to offer a handshake of peace. Instead he promised that he would squash all rebellion in the North within three months, that is, from January 1 to March 31, 1987. I told him: “Your Excellency, I hope you are right. But deep down inside, I know you are wrong because I know my Acholi people”.

President Museveni’s three months have turned into twenty years and still counting. And Northern Uganda is decimated. At the beginning of the insurgency, I witnessed herds of cattle, goats, sheep and food in Acholi plundered by the NRA/Government soldiers. Houses and whole villages were razed to the ground and some people burned to death in their houses. It was clear Yoweri Museveni was in punishing mode of the Acholi. He has evidently been in that mode since. And now even innocent Acholi women and children who know nothing of the atrocities of the Luwero Triangle have paid dearly because of Yoweri Museveni’s vindictiveness. I said it 19 years ago, and I will say it now: to the Acholi, Museveni’s military Government has been worse than Idi Amin’s military Government. When I made this same observation in a BBC interview in 1987, my life was threatened. It was the National Episcopal Church that rescued my family and me in 1987. This is why I am here today.

Peace Negotiating Efforts

There have been several attempts to negotiate Peace between the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. But President Museveni and his military have sabotaged each negotiation at critical moments when agreement might be around the corner. From the treachery of the Nairobi Peace Agreement of 1985 to the earliest failed talks between Joseph Kony and NRA in February 1988 facilitated by an Anglican priest Abel Okumu, the NRA and later UPDF has used pre-emptive attacks on planned peace meeting venues to abort negotiations with the LRA. After the 1988 fiasco, Joseph Kony accused Rev Abel Okumu of betrayal and had him killed him. The more easily known case is that of 1993/1994 in which Mrs. Betty Bigombe nearly succeeded to bring peace until President Museveni issued a 7-day ultimatum to the LRA. The next sabotage was after the so-called “Operation Iron Fist” of 2002 when Acholi Religious and Cultural Leaders succeeded to build confidence between the LRA and the Government of Uganda from March 2002 to 2003. As a fruit of the Religious and Cultural Leaders efforts, President Museveni himself appointed a Presidential Peace Team that was to meet with the LRA. Religious and cultural leaders were invited to witness. But the UPDF, the Government Army, again launched a pre-emptive attack on the venue of meeting. Again the LRA blamed the religious and cultural leaders for using peace mediation as a trap for them.

Never giving up, Mrs. Betty Bigombe tried again in November/December 2004--January 2005. She succeeded to bring LRA and Government of Uganda Peace Teams together for the first time. But again, the Government Delegation came up with a unilateral Memorandum of Understanding asking the LRA delegation to sign it even before they had studied it or consulted among themselves. When the LRA head of Peace delegation asked for more time to study the MoU, President Museveni announced that the LRA was not serious about peace after all. He ordered UPDF to resume hostilities against LRA positions. That is how the latest peace mediation effort has stalled to date. This past October 14, 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC), which President Museveni had invited, in the first place, to take on the LRA even before the war is over, announced arrest warrants for the LRA leader and his top lieutenants who are yet to be arrested. Yet the suffering of the people continues.

The Present Situation

In a press statement dated Wednesday 26 October 2005, Oxfam International quoted the July 2005 Government of Uganda, Ministry of Health, “Health and mortality survey among Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts in Northern Uganda”, that was compiled with support of several international organizations such as UNICEF, WHO, IRC, UNFPA and WFP. The Government of Uganda’s own report reveals horrifying data:

Barely a week ago, Mr. Elias Biryabarema, a journalist from Western Uganda visited the concentration camps euphemistically called Internally Displace Persons’ (IDP) Camps in Northern Uganda. He wrote in The Monitor, Uganda’s leading Independent Daily, of November 14, 2005:

“Coming from Western Uganda and knowing the rest of the country pretty well, what I saw in Acholi Bur IDP Camp and the adjoining areas on a recent visit there convinces me that perhaps only a callous government such as one of President Museveni is capable of keeping its own people in such conditions. Frankly, it is not entirely imprecise to describe what I saw as a slow extinction facing the Acholi and Langi people…When you meet such sort of a situation you ask yourselves why? These children, these women have committed no crime to deserve this. They deserve an explanation from their President. Museveni must tell these children why he took a Bible in his hand solemnly promising God that he would secure his peoples’ rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and instead allowed barbarity and unspeakable wretchedness to engulf them.”

Quoting George Washington, America’s Founding Father, Biryabarema says Northern Uganda would be justified if it chose to secede from Uganda:

“There reaches a time though when a government willfully, to use his word, becomes ‘destructive’ of a people’s rights in which case it becomes their duty to seek abolition of that government. What is happening in Northern Uganda, I believe, are not mere light and transient causes said by [George] Washington not to be significant enough to justify secession. They are a train of abuses by a government that has all but abdicated its duty to care for a people over whom it rules. And the abuses are appalling enough as to amount to a justification for seeking self-rule”

In this article, Biryabarema echoed Olara Otunnu, retired UN Under Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict who was himself born in Mucwini, Northern Uganda, where the grave of Archbishop Janani Luwum the Martyr lies. Indeed his late father, Yusto Otunnu, is the famous Anglican evangelist who pioneered the Chosen Evangelical Revival that greatly impacted Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan and Northeastern Congo. Archbishop Janani Luwum was converted in this revival in 1948.

On November 9, 2005, Olara Otunnu received the 2005 Sydney Peace Award honoring his lifetime commitment to peace and in defense of children caught up in armed conflict. In his keynote speech, “SOS Northern Uganda—Profile of a Genocide” Otunnu said:

“The human rights catastrophe unfolding in Northern Uganda is a methodical and comprehensive genocide. An entire society is being systematically destroyed—physically, culturally, socially, and economically—in full view of the international community. In the sobering words of a missionary priest in the area, ‘Everything Acholi is dying. I know of no recent or present situation where all the elements that constitute genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) have been brought together in such a comprehensively and chilling manner as in Northern Uganda today…”

Recalling history, Olara Otunnu continued,

“I wonder if we have learned any lessons from history. When millions of Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust in Europe, we said, ‘never again’—but after the fact. When genocide was perpetrated in Rwanda, we said, ‘never again’—but again after the fact. When children and women were massacred in Sebrenica, we said ‘never again’—but after it was all over. The genocide unfolding in Northern Uganda is happening on our watch, and with our full knowledge. Why is there no action…What will it take, and how long will it take, for leaders of the western democracies in particular to acknowledge, denounce and take action to end the genocide unfolding in Northern Uganda? And tomorrow, shall we once again be heard to say that we did not know what was going on? That for all these years we were unaware of the dark deeds being conducted in Northern Uganda”

My brothers and sisters, Bishop Sisk and Members of this Convention, I therefore appeal to you to pass this resolution. Let this Diocese, the Episcopal Diocese of New York, in the Anglican Communion demonstrate that: -

I pray that you pass this resolution for peace with justice in Acholi, Northern Uganda. Vote “Yes” for Peace in Northern Uganda—the focus of this Resolution.

In its latest damning report titled “Uprooted and Forgotten” released Sept 2005, the US based Human Rights Watch says the Ugandan military and the Lord's Resistance Army rebels continue with brazen impunity to kill, rape, torture and uproot civilians in northern Uganda. Human Rights Watch says the ICC should investigate and bring the guilty parties to book. Uganda: Army and Rebels Commit Atrocities in the North  

The Human Rights Watch calls on the Ugandan dictatorship to prosecute perpetrators of torture, said Human Rights Watch and the Ugandan-based Foundation for Human Rights Initiative today. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/05/17/uganda10954.htm

Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in Uganda,   http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/uganda0505/C

Download the brandnew document "State of Pain: Torture in Uganda" from Human Rights Watch!

The US Department of State's "Country Report on Uganda's Human Rights 2004",  http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41632.htm

Download the latest US Department of State Report on Supporting Human Rights and Democracy in Africa "The U.S. Record 2004 - 2005
Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor"  http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/shrd/2004/43108.htm

A Ugandan, Dr. Okungu insists Uganda's Military Intelligence (CMI) tortured him. "www.ugandaobserver.com/today/news/news200504077.php"