Rescuing Tortured Children from the LRA
By Gary Lane, CBN Chief International Correspondent.
Aug 26, 2005 (East Africa) — Children in southern Sudan and northern Uganda are living with horrors that few in the Western world can even imagine.
They are the targets of the Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA – a lawless band of rebels that use abduction, torture, and mutilation to terrorize the population.
Sunset comes in Northern Uganda. The Jaska children, living in a village near the city of Gulu, bid their mother, Amono, farewell.
It is a nightly routine – carrying blankets, pillows and bedrolls, and walking several miles to urban shelters where they bunk down until sunrise.
They conclude their day playing games and finishing up homework assignments. After bathing, it is lights out.
Tens of thousands of children in northern Uganda and south Sudan, known as the night commuters, repeat this routine every evening. Some have done so for more than two or three years.
Why do they do it? They fear a man named Joseph Kony and his cult-like band of terrorists known as the LRA.
For more than 15 years, Kony and his militiamen have terrorized the people of this East Africa region – raping, murdering, mutilating, and abducting innocent people.
One woman saw her husband hacked to death during an attack on her village. Sophia Apiro was disfigured when an LRA soldier cut off her lips and ears with a razor blade.
Sophia said, “I prayed, ?Jesus come and help me.’ A spirit of peace surrounded me and I felt Jesus saying, ?You will not die. You will live so that you may look after your children.'”
Tilling a garden is tedious and painful for 25-year-old Florence Lamaka and her mother-in-law Feliciana. That is because their left hands were severed when they were abducted by the LRA. But it was not an LRA soldier who dismembered them. Florence was forced to cut off Feliciana’s hand with an axe. Maimed and bleeding, Feliciana was then ordered to do the same to her pregnant daughter-in-law.
“An LRA soldier stood behind me with a gun and he said if you do not cut the hand of this one, I’m going to shoot you…it was hard, but I had no other choice. I did it to save our lives,” Feliciana said.
Uganda President Yoweri Museveni is determined to stop the terror. In an exclusive interview with CBN News, he talked of Kony and the Ugandan army’s efforts to kill or capture him.
CBN NEWS: Is Joseph Kony a terrorist?
YOWERI MUSEVENI: He is, he is, of course – of course he is, because a terrorist is one who uses indiscriminate violence…
CBN NEWS: Some people say Joseph Kony and the LRA have ties to al-Qaeda. Is that true?
MUSEVENI: He had, he had…it was around ’91 there…there was in the past, not now.
Kony has received other support in the region. For nearly two decades, the Islamic regime in Khartoum provided the LRA with the means to spread terror throughout northern Uganda and south Sudan.
CBN NEWS: Of course, the United States is searching for Osama bin Laden, [and] Uganda is searching for Joseph Kony. Are you going to find him?
MUSEVENI: We always know where he is… although to get there quickly has always been the problem. We shall get him.
And what about the tens of thousands of children who make that nightly journey from their rural villages into the cities?
Museveni says that because the Ugandan army now has Kony and the LRA on the run, the threat to the children is more perceived than real.
MUSEVENI: It’s no longer possible to kidnap children, but it is part of the hangover because it was happening.
CBN NEWS: The mindset hasn’t changed?
MUSEVENI: It hasn’t changed, but on the ground, those people are not able to kidnap children anymore.
Perhaps the LRA poses less of a threat to villagers in northern Uganda these days, but that is not the case in parts of south Sudan.
The village of Alogwi is not far from Nimule, south Sudan. On a typical day you would see much activity – children playing, women tending to crops, but no longer. It is a virtual ghost town. That is because the LRA came in and raided this village in early May. They killed several people, abducted children, and raped several young girls.
Two boys were also victimized last spring. They witnessed the slaughter of their parents during a raid on the village of Pagari. Alex Lagu, 11, was shot in the shoulder and left for dead. His left arm was amputated as a result. Five-year-old Steven Obulejo lost his left arm when an LRA soldier attacked him with a machete.
Enter American missionary, Sam Childers. He has rescued more than 400 Ugandan and Sudanese children from the LRA during the past three years. He gives them a safe haven at his Children’s Village in Nimule.
CBN News witnessed Alex and Steven’s arrival and Childers’ response.
“Tell them they both can come tonight or tomorrow, it doesn’t matter,” Childers assured. “They’re welcome to come stay… Tell them – Tom-Tom will not come here and harm them.”
Last May, the LRA also attacked a village not far from Childers’s compound. That prompted the construction of a chain-link fence financed by Cornerstone Television of Pittsburgh. Childers has armed guards patrolling the Children’s Village around the clock -especially late at night – the LRA’s preferred time of attack.
While the security measures help reassure the children that they will be safe, the youngsters are still chained by horrifying memories that torment their minds.
Childers said, “If you sleep here on the compound, there is not at night that goes by that you won’t hear the cries and screams in the middle of the night. These children got to re-live what happened to them.”
Childers also said that he is praying that God will send experienced Christian trauma counselors to Children’s Village to minister to those abused by the LRA.
Girls like Mary and Betty. They were abducted by the LRA and forced to service the sexual desires of their captors. Childers rescued 11-year-old Betty in 2003.
“She come with us when she was nine and she was sexually abused very bad,” Childers explained. “She could hardly walk when she came. And now, these two are the leaders of our choir.”
The nightly ritual of song and dance by the Children’s Village kids contrasts with that of the nightly commuters. For a few moments, these children forget the horrors and atrocities they have witnessed and experienced.
Childers says that he will continue to rescue children until the terror spread by Kony and the LRA comes to an end.
In the meantime, he is building more housing – four dormitories for the kids.
He showed us one, saying, “This building is one that was fully funded by CBN.”
CBN News asked Childers, “And what difference will that mean for the kids?”
Childers said, “Instead of one big building where there’s 50 kids sleeping inside, now they have a home. Now this first house that we have done, the children will be moving in, I hope, within the next couple of days. We’re going to put the older children inside of here. They’re older and everything, so they need their own privacy.”
This visit was longer than usual for Childers. After a stay of nearly three months, it’s time to bid farewell to his African children and return to his American family in Pennsylvania. He will return to Sudan, perhaps in the fall.
He leaves Children’s Village reassured– the new fence has made the compound more secure. He knows the new dormitories will mean more children will be rescued. And Childers is confident that new orphan arrivals Alex and Steven are now living in a safe place, a home filled with love and hope.
“You know, a lot of these young children, they’ve never experienced God in the way that we have. We lift everything to Heaven because it’s our only hope. These children, all they know is their only hope could be us,” Childers said.
CBN is a multifaceted christian nonprofit organization that provides programming by cable, broadcast and satellite to approximately 200 countries, with a 24-hour telephone prayer line.