Friends
One of the point some of us have tried to post zillion times is that the people
of Luwero never wanted to join NRA, but the violence that John Ogole forced on
the population, he literary drove the population to Museveni’s protection. UNLA
was simply a pile of violent thugs. Now look closely at the starting sentence
on this series and this is a direct quote “The NRA’s bad behavior toward people
in the north—including harassment, rape, and looting—tended to engender support
for Kony’s rebels until the early 1990s, when Kony’s brutality began to
outweigh that of Museveni’s army With waning Acholi support, theLRA began
large-scale attacks on Acholi land civilian targets. LRA abductee Richard
believed “ End quote. It just amazes me how Acholi failed learn that they lost
the support of the people of Luwero due to violence, but still did the very
same violence in Acholi land to the very same results. KRISTEN E. CHENEY
Anthropology Board, University of California at Santa Cruz, USA flew to Uganda
and wrote a thesis under a heading ‘Our Children Have Only Known War’:
Children’s Experiences and the Uses of Childhood in Northern Uganda Children’s
Geographies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 23–45, April 2005. We are posting from page 25
Ugandans we need to discuss Acholi violence candidly.
The NRA’s bad behavior toward people in the north—including harassment, rape,
and looting—tended to engender support for Kony’s rebels until the early 1990s,
when Kony’s brutality began to outweigh that of Museveni’s army. With waning
Acholi support, theLRA began large-scale attacks on Acholi land civilian
targets. LRA abductee Richard believed, ‘They abduct people and they mistreat
tribe mates because they claim that the people used to report them to the
government troops, especially [when they give the government] instruction;
maybe they have then shot one of their rebels, their commanders, so they
mistreat people seriously. They were doing that to [get] revenge’. The LRA
increased abductions, especially of children, who were easier to control and
indoctrinate. Chancy and Richard’s stories are typical of children abducted by
the LRA. Survivors’ stories of LRA captivity are characterized by extreme
brutality, elaborate ritual, fear, and hunger. When children are abducted, they
are typically tied together and forced to march without rest or food while
carrying stolen goods for rebels.
Chancy
Chancy was born in 1986,the year Museveni came to power. It was also the year
that Alice Lakwena started the Holy Spirit Movement. Chancy was the third of
six children. Her parents subsistence-farmed at their Gulu District village
home, and her father occasionally got work as a farmhand on commercial farms.
When her parents separated in 1996, she stayed with her father and stepmother,
who was abusive. She went to live with her aunt instead, and in 1998, she
rejoined her mother in Anaka IDP camp. We stayed in that camp because the
rebels were disturbing people in the village. Because in the camp there are no
gardens, you have to go sometimes to the village to collect food from your home
garden. So we had gone to dig cassava. We could not come back immediately so we
slept in the village. Sometimes we would hear that rebels are around, but that
day when we went home, we had not even heard of the presence of rebels, so we
stayed there thinking nothing would happen at night. We were not sleeping in
the house; we were sleeping in the bush. We thought it was safe to sleep in the
bush and wake up in the morning. But the rebels got ascertain lady who knew
where we were sleeping so she led them to us: my mother, my elder sister, and
me. They walked around us with torches as we were sleeping. They told us to get
up and they started asking us why we have slept outside. They asked, ‘Are there
government soldiers around?’ And then they asked, ‘Is there a trading center
around?’ So that’s when I knew they were rebels. So my sister was made to carry
luggage a distance and they set her free, but I was the youngest so they took
me away. Her abductors joined up with the rest of their battalion and reported
their new acquisitions. Chancy estimated there were about one hundred rebel
soldiers, and she was one of fifteen children abducted that night, bringing
their total number of recent captives to about fifty. When she was abducted,
Chancy said, ‘I found some children who were from the same school, and I found
some others who were from our village. I knew them
. . .
but we were not supposed to talk about wanting to go home, or escape, because
if you do it you are going to be beaten or killed’. Children who attempt but
fail to escape face death at the hands of other captives, who are forced to
beat the accused to death with a log or machete. You are told to kill. One day
a boy escaped and they went to his home and they got him there so they brought
him and told all the captives to come and kill him. A few of us were called to
the well, so I didn’t kill the boy. I came and found they had already killed
him. They used clubs or big sticks and they beat and hit him. They always hit
the back of the head. After that, those who have participated in the beating,
they will do a ritual ceremony for cleansing. They sprinkle water on them. They
say the ritual is to cleanse them from that killing. Some successfully escape,
but others are fully socialized into the LRA lifestyle. Until recently, many
had eventually been force-marched across the border into Sudan, where boys (and
some girls) were trained as soldiers and often ordered to attack their own
villages. Chancy was not taken to Sudan right away, but she was trained to
shoot a weapon over the course of one month and was forced to loot villages and
homesteads as they made their way through Gulu and Kitgum Districts. She said
that at one time they tried to enter Sudan but were shot at and so retreated.
She was relieved. I was thinking that if they took us to Sudan it would be
difficult to come back or to escape. We were always guarded by soldiers, even
when we were going to fetch water or we were moving anywhere. They were always
watching. And whenever you do something wrong you are beaten and sometimes when
we meet with the government[army] and they start shooting, we run away and we
throw our luggage. If you throw your luggage you are beaten, so you have to run
with your luggage. Shortly after she was abducted in 1999, the rebels told her
group that the angels had said they would overtake the government in 2000. When
nothing happened in 2000, they revised their projected takeover for 2002.
That’s when Chancy knew they were lying. ‘I did not feel good’, she said. ‘All
the time I would think if the there is a way I would escape
. . .
but it was very difficult because of the soldiers looking at us, watching us all
the time. So life was hard with no peace, no happiness. I escaped because of
the suffering you can’t imagine. They can kill you anytime. They don’t care
about people. They don’t really care about anybody ‘Girls suffer particular
hardships in LRA captivity. They are commonly given as ‘wives’ to commanders.
Chancy said that when she was told to go to a commander, ‘I was so scared but I
could not refuse. I had seen a girl refuse to go to a man. She was beaten so
bad and she was tied on a tree to be shot
. . .
When she was about to be killed, she went to him’. Girls are forced to perform
domestic tasks for their ‘husbands’ and are regularly raped. When they bear
children at the hands of their captors, it lessens their possibility for
successful escape. Chancy and others finally found their chance to escape in the
summer of 2001. When they came close to a small town, government forces
ambushed their camp. When we had gone in the villages to loot chicken and some
food, we didn’t know that the government soldiers were there. So one boy, as he
entered a house to loot, the government soldiers caught him. But for us, we ran
away. And then this boy led the government soldiers to where we were. We were
already camped and were trying to look for firewood to cook. All of a sudden,
another rebel group—the one which had gone to loot—was also coming back. The
government soldiers saw them before they saw us, so when they started shooting
is when we realized they were there, so we all started running. And as we ran I
branched away from the main group and the girl we had planned with, my co-wife,
went on her own. But fortunately she also branched away although we did not
meet. So they continued to run in one direction as I was running in another
direction. I crossed the river and the other girls had crossed the river and I
realized they had already gone. I was alone. As I was moving ahead I saw my
friend with two other boys. So I ran to them. As we were moving the government
soldiers again saw us because they still had that boy they had captured. And so
they asked the boy and I think he told them, ‘These are part of the rebels’. So
they followed [us] and they started shooting guns at us but they were shooting
high. They wanted us to stop but we were already running. As we ran we also
separated again from the two boys, who went on their own. The two of us went on
our own, but they were still following us. So we went to the village, we got
the chairman of the local council, and we were asking him to show us the way to
town. The chairman refused; he said he wanted to take us to the government
detach, so we accepted. As we were still moving, the rebels we were with were
also looking for us. As we crossed the road to the detach they had also come.
So we went and reported to the army. The rebel lieutenant whom I was given to
as a wife came up to the road and the government again shot him and I heard
they broke his arm. The government brought us to the main barracks in Gulu
Town, and then they brought me to World Vision.
Chancy was in the barracks for a while as the army debriefed her about her
rebel activities in the bush in efforts to gather intelligence to help defeat
the rebels. Chancy was one of a half dozen girls at the rehabilitation center
when I met her. Others had had children by their captors and had escaped with
babies on their backs. Now that she and the other girls felt they were safe,
they were trying to put the past behind them and look forward to the future.
‘At World Vision’, Chancy said, ‘We don’t talk much about the bush, but we talk
about home’. Unfortunately, girls usually face the double stigma of having been
raped and having contracted HIV/AIDS or other venereal diseases.
2
They therefore utilize different reintegration strategies than boys, trying as
quickly as possible to blend back into society(Shepler, 2002).
Series one hundred and thirty six is going to be a continuation of this study.
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika
machafuko"
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