Uganda seeks arrests of LRA rebels hiding in Congo
By Joyce Mulama
April 9, 2006 (NAIROBI) — Uganda has appealed to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to disarm and arrest rebels hiding in the vast central African country.
The government of President Yoweri Museveni wants the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who have been causing havoc in northern Uganda, to be tried for crimes against humanity.
”It means that wherever they (LRA) are, these countries (Uganda and DRC) should cooperate and arrest them so that they can be tried for their crimes. I do not think that their going to the DRC saves them, unless the DRC abdicates this appeal,” Onapito Ekolomoit, Uganda’s presidential press secretary, told IPS from Kampala, the country’s capital.
Efforts by IPS to get a response from the DRC government through its embassy in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, were unsuccessful.
The bulk of the LRA fighters crossed into the lawless eastern DRC from their hideouts in neighbouring South Sudan last year. Sudan threw its weight behind the LRA in retaliation for Uganda’s alleged support for the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), a rebel group that waged a bush war against successive Khartoum regimes between 1983 and 2005. The conflicts strained relations between the two neighbours. However, the new Sudanese government, formed after last year’s watershed north-south peace deal, has pledged to crack down on the LRA.
Salva Kiir, president of the government of South Sudan, has urged the LRA to negotiate with the Uganda government or leave South Sudan before facing military action. ”As a fighting force, the LRA has no teeth. We have effectively wiped it out from Uganda. We know there are still a handful of rebels who have not crossed over to the Congo, and are trying to do so, but the army is pursuing them. Since we have no protocol to fight the rebels in the Congo, we are pursuing them here (Uganda),” Ekolomoit added.
In 2004, Uganda asked the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Netherlands, to investigate violations in northern Uganda. This followed efforts by the Uganda government to invite the rebels to the negotiating table. But the rebels declined to seize the opportunity.
Not only the rebels but also the army has been accused of committing atrocities against civilians in northern Uganda, something which the government has denied.
Led by former Catholic catechist Joseph Kony, the LRA, which seeks to rule Uganda on laws based on the ten biblical commandments, has been accused of widespread murder, torture and rape, for nearly 20 years of fighting the army. The rebels have kidnapped thousands of children, majority of whom have been recruited as child soldiers.
Thousands of people have died from the conflict while about 1.5 million others have been uprooted from their homes since the war erupted in 1986. The districts most affected are Pader, Kitgum and Gulu in northern Uganda.
The conflict, which has been described by the United Nations as the world’s most forgotten war, has seen thousands of people, particularly children, stream in towns at night to seek shelter in hospital and church corridors, fearing abduction.
But the situation seems to have improved now. ”In 2003-2004, we had 40,000 people flocking into churches and different centres in Gulu town. Now, there are very few people,” Catholic priest Carlos Rodriguez told IPS in a telephone interview from Gulu, without providing any figures. He is the secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission at the Catholic Archdiocese of Gulu.
The killings have also reduced remarkably. ”In 2004, we used to have 30 to 40 people killed every month. But in the last six months, only 56 people have been killed,” Rodriguez added.
The improvement in human rights abuses has also been noted by Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. ”There are less LRA attacks in northern Uganda and in some regions, people are returning to their homes,” he told journalists at a news conference in Nairobi on Apr 7. The conference followed his visit to northern Uganda last week.
According to him, between 200,000 and 300,000 people in neighbouring Teso and Lango regions had moved from Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps back to their homes.
Egeland, however, expressed concern about the poor conditions at the IDP camps. ”There is overcrowding and people live in subhuman conditions in these camps,” he remarked.
Ugandan authorities say a plan is underway to decongest the camps by helping in the resettlement of the IDPs. ”The government is giving them a resettlement package, which includes iron sheets for construction of houses, seeds for planting and ox-ploughs,” Ekolomoit said.
The farming facilities are expected to ensure food security in a region that has been depending on relief aid for two decades.
To boost food security in the region, Egeland launched an appeal for 426 million dollars to support the urgent needs of over eight million people severely affected by drought in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea.
Poverty-stricken and conflict-affected people living in those countries have been facing severe water shortages and a declining access to food following rainfall failures. This has resulted to loss of livelihoods – both human and livestock.
”We have to invest in food security of these vulnerable populations. We need this money like yesterday, at the latest tomorrow, if we are to save the lives of the eight million people at the risk of death,” Egeland stressed.
(IPS)