UN says attacks by Ugandan rebels may amount to war crimes

December 21, 2009 (GENEVA) – Two UN reports released on Monday said that the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) killed, mutilated and raped villagers in Sudan and Congo in 2008 and 2009 in what may have been crimes against humanity.

In two reports, UN rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, urged countries to bring LRA leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after about 1,300 civilians were killed in dozens of attacks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo until June. The reports also say the rebels abducted some 1400 people including children and women.

The U.N.’s rights office said that, in at least 27 attacks on villages in southern Sudan, the LRA killed more than 80 civilians and kidnapped many others to use as child soldiers, sex slaves and spies.

“These attacks and systematic and widespread human rights violations carried out by the LRA… may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Pillay’s report on DR Congo said, echoing a similar statement on crimes against humanity in her report on Sudan.

“The international community, including governments in the region, should cooperate with the International Criminal Court to search for, arrest and surrender the LRA leaders accused of crimes against humanity,” the report said.

The report described the attacks in Sudan, which it said took place between December 2008 and March 2009, deliberate and brutal.

Both reports were based on hundreds of interviews with survivors and several field trips to the remote areas by U.N. employees.

One survivor in Sudan told U.N. employees that he found the mutilated body of a fellow villager.

“The villager’s leg had been chopped off, his jaws had been dislocated and his teeth had been pulled out,” the report said.

The rebels frequently cross into Congo and Sudan and are notorious for mutilating and murdering civilians and kidnapping children to use as fighters.

Survivors in Sudan told U.N. investigators that armed Lord’s Resistance Army rebels arrived in groups of between five and 20, and attacked people with axes, bayonets, hoes, knives and machetes known as “pangas”. They reserved the use of firearms for those who tried to flee, the report said.

“The LRA attacks may amount to crimes against humanity,” it said.

The report on Congo said thousands of homes, dozens of shops, hospitals, churches and at least thirty schools were looted and set on fire in various parts of Orientale Province. Villagers were mutilated, tortured and raped, the report said.

The widespread abuses may have been war crimes and crimes against humanity, it said.

The Lord’s Resistance Army which appeared in 1988 has been fighting the Ugandan government for over 20 years, accusing it of discriminating against the country’s northern tribes.

The Ugandan military, along with forces from Congo and southern Sudan, launched a joint operation against Lord’s Resistance Army rebels in Congo from December 2008 to March 2009. The offensive came after rebel leader Joseph Kony failed to turn up last year to sign a definitive peace agreement.

Kony and other top Lord’s Resistance Army members are accused by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kony is still at large, as are many of his commanders, although the rebels have splintered into several smaller groups.

(ST)