Uganda war victims want LRA tried locally – govt

August 29, 2007 (KAMPALA) — Most of the victims of Uganda’s 20-year war want local courts to try the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels for alleged war crimes, rather than see them indicted by an international tribunal, the government said on Wednesday.

Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, chief government negotiator at talks with the rebels, said he had carried out “extensive consultations” with Ugandans in the war-ravaged north, but gave no figures.

“Very many of them felt that Uganda by using traditional and formal justice systems, will provide a sufficient alternative to handle issues of accountability and reconciliation,” he said.

Two decades of war in northern Uganda killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 1.7 million before peace talks in south Sudan began in July 2006, leading to a truce the following August that has been largely respected.

But the LRA has said it will never sign a final peace deal unless the International Criminal Court drops indictments against four top commanders for crimes such as killing civilians, slicing body parts off victims and kidnapping children.

The rebels have said they might accept local courts as an alternative to the Hague-based tribunal but are angered at what they say is the government’s unwillingness to put its own soldiers accused of atrocities on trial.

In June, the Human Rights Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed 2,875 people in the north, 58 percent of whom wanted the LRA to be tried but with 76 percent saying they feared the ICC indictments would jeopardise peace.

Elders from the LRA’s Acholi tribe want the rebels to undergo traditional reconciliation rituals to deal with crimes. But human rights groups argue such rituals would fail to dish out punishments fitting the alleged crimes, such as long jail terms.

(Reuters)