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Category Archives: In the News
ICC Judges Want Ongwen Charges Confirmed in Uganda
Prayer Session for fallen victims @JRP
ICC Judges Want Ongwen Charges Confirmed in Uganda
Judges seating at the Pre-Trial chamber II of the International Criminal Court handling charges against Dominic Ongwen have appealed to parties involved in Ongwen proposed trial in Uganda to expedite the process.
The crimes were committed in Uganda, confirmation of charges and hearing of his charges including counts on crime against humanity and war crimes slated scheduled for January 21 2016 lasting 5 days will determine if there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Ongwen.
Dominic Ongwen ready to face the ICC
Addressing the press today at Northern Uganda Media Club, ICC Field Outreach Assistant, Jimmy Otim, said, the Pre-Trial judges on September 10-2015 recommended to ICC president to work out modalities with Uganda Government to enable the confirmation of charges take place in Uganda.
“ The Chamber considers that it would be desirable and in the interest of justice to hold the confirmation of charges hearing in Uganda and preferably in Gulu” Jimmy said
Adding that it was at the peak of the alleged crime and where this is not possible then the ICC would consider the trials in Kampala.
Mass Grave Site in Lukodi @JRP
Dominic shocked the world when he on the 16th of January this year, denounced further rebellion against Museveni’s government when he abandon his gorilla troops under the Lord Resistance Army.
Women wonder over their missing children
Before he surrendered Ongwen was acting as Brigade Commander of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army where is alleged to have committed countless murder cases, enslavement of the populace, caused grave bodily harm an act that provoked ICC to count him in the wanted list of war lords on 8 July 2005.
Victims of the dangerous LRA war
He is accused to have masterminded the bloody attack at Lukodi Internally Displaced People’s Camp where innocent lives were shuttered in cold blood.
In trying to document the 29 years of LRA war in the region, a monument with the name of over forty slain victims sits near Lukodi Primary school in Bungatira Sub-county ten miles north of Gulu municipality.
http://www.northernewswire.com/news/featured-news/icc-judges-want-ongwen-charges-confirmed-in-uganda.html
Support Victims of LRA War to Rebuild Their Lives
OPINION
By Lino Owor Ogora
Every August 30, the world commemorates the International Day of Missing Persons. In northern Uganda, thousands of people are still missing as a result of the conflict that ravaged the region between 1986 and 2006. These people went missing in various circumstances. Some were displaced as they fled their villages to seek refuge from marauding LRA rebels; others were abducted by the rebels, while others simply went missing during combat.
The relatives of these missing people continue to live with suspense of not knowing whether their relatives are dead or alive. As long as their relatives have not been declared dead, they hang on to the slim hope that one day they will show up. In addition to relatives of the missing, thousands of victims in northern Uganda continue to live with painful memories of horrendous experiences they suffered during the conflict. Many of them were victims of torture. Many lost their relatives.
Many peace-building practitioners argue that memory is central to the recovery of victims of conflict. To heal and live a meaningful life, victims need to come to terms with their past experiences.
Peace-building practitioners, therefore, design programmes for psychosocial support and healing. They build museums and monuments in memory of people who died or went missing. They advocate for reparations and accountability of perpetrators. They opine themselves as champions for promoting recovery and healing for the victims
The grim reality, however, is that many of these peace-building practitioners never understand what it truly takes for victims to live with painful memories. Having not gone through the horrendous experience of victims, the practitioners rely on their interface with victims to design their programmes. They simplify and ‘projectise’ memory. They design and implement quick projects that often have no sustainability measures. At the end of these projects, they say goodbye to the victims, write a report to donors in which they glorify their achievements in promoting memory.
As a researcher who has lived and worked in northern Uganda for many years, I have learnt a thing or two about memory. There are many glaring realities about memory that peace-builders do not take into consideration.
Finally, acknowledgment of victims’ experiences through symbolic gestures is also a sure avenue for promoting memory. This acknowledgement can take the form of museums, monuments, memorial projects, or official apologies from perpetrators.
Therefore, as peace-builders design memory projects, they must remember that the greatest determinant factor in healing and memory are the victims themselves. Victims must be empowered to take control of their destiny. Memory projects must not be theoretical and abstract but must improve the wellbeing and situations of victims.
Only then can victims hope to move on with their lives.
The first and most important is that victims will never forget what they went through no matter how many interventions are implemented for them. The second is that the ability to cope with memory is subjective and varies from one individual to another. It is also dependent on the individual experiences that each victim underwent. Thirdly, the ability of victims to cope with their memories is enhanced when their alleged tormentors face justice. Justice, however, must be holistic and not simply focus on punishing perpetrators, but also on repairing the harm done to victims for example through restoration of their livelihoods.
Mr Owor Ogora is a former head of the Justice and Reconciliation Project and an independent researcher and consultant.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201509040516.html
Will LRA victims get justice?
http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Letters/Will-LRA-victims-get-justice-/-/806314/2827272/-/cn5kfsz/-/index.html
Just months after the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a team of investigators crisscrossed northern Uganda to drum up support for the proceedings against Dominic Ongwen, it has become evident that survivors of the more than two-decade LRA (1987-2008) insurgency find themselves at cross-roads in their pursuit for justice. The sad fact is, they may not even ever realise it.
In a recent meeting of victims and survivors from across Acholi and Lango sub-regions held at Olango Conference Hall in Gulu organised by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, the victims’ representatives made more demands than the ICC was ever designed to deliver on.
The meeting was convened to discuss inter alia what justice for international crimes means for northern Uganda, how the different communities in Lango and Acholi feel about the trial of Ongwen and what role they see the trial playing in fostering reconciliation and other imperatives.
Instead it vividly demonstrated a major mismatch between survivor expectations and what the ICC can actually offer, with more and more communities in the region positioning themselves as supporting the ICC and disengaging from other transitional justice processes in the hopes of benefiting from Ongwen’s trial. Not only are all the affected sub-regions Teso, Lango, Acholi and West Nile expecting direct compensation (court reparations) from the ICC if or when Dominic Ongwen gets convicted, they also have fundamentally misplaced beliefs that the ICC is best placed to facilitate processes such as reconciliation, truth-seeking and traditional justice mechanisms in the affected areas.
The risk here is that by wrongly pinning their hopes on a court established to prosecute rather than to reconcile, local communities will unintentionally further weaken an already faltering national process to develop an appropriate transitional justice policy and legislation. Communities are right to want comprehensive (transitional) justice based on accountability, truth seeking, compensation, reparations and reconciliation, but they are wrong to think that the ICC can deliver on all of these. The fact that they are even trying to do so is a damming indictment of the government’s transitional justice development process that has dragged on for eight years and, despite being now on its sixth draft, has yet to be finalised, let alone operationalised in support of the survivors of northern Uganda and other regions of the country.
Stephen Oola,
s.oola@refugeelawproject.org
34 years later: more questions on Ombaci
By Stephen Ssenkaaba
Thirty-Four years since the Ombaci massacre in the Northern Uganda district of Arua, more questions than answers abound.
As victims, their families and leaders in Arua came together this year to commemorate the massacre in which the Uganda National Liberation Army(UNLA) soldiers-in pursuit of Uganda army rebels- killed more than 100 innocent civilians- concerns over reparation, reconciliation and the plight of several poor survivors still linger.
“We hope that finally something can be done to address these issues,” Stephen Acidri, the coordinator of a recently founded Ombaci Massacres Survivors Association said.
The Massacre
On Wednesday, June 24, 1981 UNLA soldiers rounded up Arua town in pursuit of rebels and former soldiers of the Uganda Army.
This brought about tension.
“The soldiers attacked homes, looted property and drove us from our homes,” 84 year old Ismail Saidi, a survivor, said.
In order to escape the wrath of the soldiers, Saidi and many people sought refuge inside the premises of St. Joseph’s college Ombaci and the Catholic Mission nearby.
“It is while hiding here for our lives that we were attacked by the soldiers who thought we were concealing rebels and or collaborating with them,” Saidi, who lost a daughter and two nephews recalls.
“They came into the store where we were hiding and showered us with bullets, they went into the carpentry, the church and other places around the school and the mission killing people.”
After about four hours of shooting, nearly 100 people were dead and several others injured and abandoned at a makeshift camp that had been erected by the Red Cross.
No amends
Since the massacre, Acidri says very little has been done to heal the wounds of one of the most brutal attacks on innocent civilians in Uganda’s recent history.
“Not much has been done to bring the perpetrators of these heinous crimes to book. No efforts have been taken to establish a truth and reconciliation process to facilitate the healing in this attack that hurt so many people and divided communities. What’s more, there has been no attempt to establish responsibility for these crimes,” Acidri says.
On the ground in Arua, many people claiming to be survivors are coming up and seeking to be compensated. And yet, without clear mechanisms to authenticate the claimants, the identification process risks being taken advantage of. Serious doubts also remain over any plans to hold perpetrators accountable for the human rights abuses that were committed in this gruesome murder.
Poor documentation
The Uganda Human Rights Commission has made recent visits to the site where the massacre took place but has yet to come up with a comprehensive report.
However, a 2013 report by the Justice and Reconciliation project (JRP) indicates that the government soldiers at the time (UNLA) violated international law for which the government of Uganda is still responsible.
“The murders and looting clearly amount to crimes against humanity…” says the report which adds: “What makes the Ombaci massacre such an agregious violation was the deliberate targeting of civilians, a religious mission and of clergy and International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) personnel, who are explicitly protected in instances of non-international armed conflict such as this one under Common Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.”
Rt. Rev Fredrick Drandua, the retired bishop of Arua Catholic Diocese- who was an influential leader in Arua at the time of the massacre says that for all the atrocities that took place then, “there is need for all of us to rise above the bad days and forge ahead by doing good, forgiving and forgetting.”
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/671542-34-years-later-more-questions-on-ombaci.html
For Ugandan children born of war, the struggle continues
By Samuel Okiror
http://www.irinnews.org/report/101721/for-ugandan-children-born-of-war-the-struggle-continues
KAMPALA, 7 July 2015 (IRIN) – Actual combat may have ended almost a decade ago in northern Uganda, but for many women abducted by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army and the children they conceived in captivity, the war is far from over. Sexual exploitation, beatings, stigmatization and community rejection, lack of medical care and education, and deprivation of land rights are among the challenges faced by those who escaped from or were released by the LRA.
For two decades from the mid-1980s, between 10,000 and 15,000 girls and women were abducted from their homes in northern Uganda to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves of LRA commanders. These forced unions resulted in a population group often neglected by post-war recovery programmes: children born of war.
According to a recent article published by the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), “Thousands of such children exist on the margins, fathered through sexual violence by not only the LRA, but also government forces and a multitude of other state and non-state armed actors.”
A new report by the Justice and Reconciliation Project, based in the northern town of Gulu, points out that scores more women were subjected to sexual violence and exploitations in the so-called “protected villages” where most of the population of northern Uganda was forced to live during the war.
“As if the original violations were not severe enough, female victims are especially susceptible to ongoing forms of re-victimisation that extend long after initial violations occur,” says the report, titled, “Alone Like a Tree: Reintegration Challenges Facing Children Born of War [CBW] and Their Mothers in Northern Uganda.”
Photo: Lindsay McClain Opiyo/IRIN
The members of Awach tailoring group, Gulu district. The group is of mothers of children born out of war and other conflict related situations
Consequences live on
The consequences for the women of protracted stigmatisation can include depression and other forms of mental illness as well as increased vulnerability to future abuse and violence due to economic marginalisation.
Women interviewed by the report’s authors said their new partners often “do not want to pay their [children’s] school fees, and the step-parents are reportedly a major source of insults against CBW. They are continuously ostracised and isolated in some homes.”
Interviewees also reported many cases of sexual abuse of both female and male CBW by stepfathers and other relatives. Reporting such abuse was very difficult, especially when the perpetrators were members of the armed forces.
“In the new relationships, the slightest disagreement between husband and wife gets blamed on the women’s past. Even when the man is also formerly-abducted, he can stigmatize the woman, accusing her of sleeping with many men from the bush as a means of justifying his abuse,” says the report.
One 17-year-old boy born in LRA captivity told the researchers: “We are sometimes told the home we are staying in is not our home, and the person taking care of us is not our father. That we should go and look for our father. This is always said by other children in that home. This makes our lives miserable.”
Neglected by reintegration programmes
According to Jackson Odong of the National Memory and Documentation Centre in the northern Ugandan town of Kitgum, the needs of such populations have been neglected.
“Children born in captivity and their mothers continue to suffer because while they were encouraged to return, there was limited support for their reintegration. Focus was largely on ex-combatants. There have been little or no specific interventions targeting surviving children and mothers,” he said.
Irene Ikomu, a human rights lawyer and the coordinator of Parliament Watch Uganda, told IRIN that the report highlighted the need to evaluate current reintegration processes in northern Uganda. “There are clearly gaps that are yet to be addressed and this explains the continued challenges despite peace,” she said.
“Successful reintegration is not just about short-term concerns and political stability, but should especially focus on the long-term strategies for economic reconstruction and development,” added Ikomu.
“In northern Uganda, we cannot say we have fully addressed reintegration without dealing with the issue of land access for the former combatants and victims, especially with regard to CBW,” she said.
The chairman of Uganda’s Amnesty Commission, Peter Onega, shared this view.
“It’s a serious issue. If not addressed urgently, it’s recipe for violence and conflict. As a commission, we haven’t done proper reintegration of these people because we are incapacitated. We don’t have the resources due to low government funding,” he told IRIN, explaining that only around US$1.5 million of the $2.5 million budgeted for reintegration programmes annually had been forthcoming.
“We need to carry out community sensitization, dialogues and reconciliation meetings to create an atmosphere for the community members to fully accept and live peacefully with these children and women,” he added.
Photo: Claire Kahunde/IRIN
The children born of war and their mothers performing Acholi traditional dance in Atiak sub county, Amuru district
The ICTJ article noted that while rebels who surrendered “were awarded reinsertion packages of basic household items by the government, there were no additional allowances for those with children born in captivity. This trend continues today, with many governmental and non-governmental programmes recognizing formerly-abducted persons as a special category for assistance, but not children born of war.”
Even within this category, different groups have different needs, the article explained.
“For instance, female and male children will face different challenges in societies in which females’ families receive dowry when their daughter marries while males are expected to inherit land and other resources when they come of age. In northern Uganda, some families and clans have rejected male children born of war to a higher extent than females because they do not want to allocate land to them on which to settle when they come of age.”
In March 2014, the Women’s Advocacy Network, a coalition of various groups, including some made up of mothers of CBW, petitioned parliament to set up a gender-sensitive reparations fund to provide free health services to women and children affected by the insurgency, and a mechanism to “identify, integrate, and regularize stateless children born in captivity.” The network also called on the government to “identify, integrate, and resettle child victims of formerly-abducted women whose clan/cultural belongings are unknown.”
While parliament did pass a resolution, it has yet to bear fruit.
so/am
Ugandan Forces Confirm Lord’s Resistance Army Commander Has Surrendered
Uganda’s army has confirmed the announcement from the US that American and African Union forces in the Central African Republic are holding Dominic Ongwen, a top commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) who is wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Recruited by the LRA as a child, Ongwen has allegedly served as an aide to the guerrilla group’s leader Joseph Kony and is wanted for crimes against humanity, with charges that include murder and enslavement. In a 2005 arrest warrant, the ICC noted that Ongwen was a key member of the LRA’s “Control Altar,” the core leadership responsible for “devising and implementing strategy, including standing orders to attack and brutalize civilian populations.” Reports emerged in 2005 alleging that he had been killed, but were disproved following a DNA test.
“We can now confirm he’s the one and we can also confirm he’s in our custody at our base in Obo,” Paddy Ankunda, Uganda’s military spokesman, said on Wednesday. “We think he was just tired of bush life and simply turned himself in.”
Read more:
https://news.vice.com/article/ugandan-forces-confirm-lords-resistance-army-commander-has-surrendered
Government to document missing persons
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Govt-to-document-dead–missing-persons/-/688334/2476230/-/psuc9h/-/index.html
By James Owich
Posted Monday, October 6 2014 at 01:00
Gulu.
Government will document all missing persons killed during the northern Uganda war and those presumed to be still in captivity of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, the minister Without Portfolio in charge of Political Mobilisation has said.
Addressing journalists in Gulu Town at the weekend, Mr Richard Todwong said the documentation had been planned to take place in 2010 but was delayed “since most of the people were still in Internally Displaced People’s camps.”
LRA rebels waged a two-decade war during which they massacred a people and abducted hundreds.
“Government is now ready to conduct the documentation, which will tell the figure of missing persons,” Mr Todwong said.
He said resident district commissioners in the region had been instructed to document, not only missing persons, but even those who were killed.
Stock-taking
This, according to Mr Todwong, is part of the stock-taking of what transpired during the war.
Ms Kerobina Kalokwera, 62, a mother of six whose son Faustino Okello, 11, was abducted in 1996, applauded the initiative, saying she still hopes her son is still alive.
Ms Lilly Odong, the chairperson Pece Missing Person’s Group, an association of parents whose children are still missing, said many members had lost hope on finding their children alive.
However, she urged civil society organisations and other stakeholders to support the initiative.
Mr Oryem Nyeko, Communications Officer Justice & Reconciliation Project (JRP), a local NGO that promotes sustainable peace says the affected families has over the past years been having questions of where their loved ones are years after they were abducted.
“This initiative will give the families the opportunity to mourn for their relatives in case they died or build on hope that they will safely return,” Mr Nyeko commented.
In October of 2008, Dr. Stephen Kagoda, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported to Parliament that some of the missing children might have been sold in the Darfur area of Sudan, as soldiers, sex slaves and cheap labourers by LRA leader, Mr Joseph Kony.
The two decade war, left over a million people displaced, and over 30,000 children forcefully abducted as child soldiers while women were sexually abused. Statistics from by Amnesty Commission indicate that so far only, 8, 000 children majority now adults have safely returned and reintegrated into their respective communities.
A 2012 report by CAP Uganda indicates a total of 1,000 people abducted by the LRA are still missing and their where about are unknown.
Missing
The where abouts. According to a 2012 report by CAP Uganda, more than 1,000 people, who were abducted by the LRA, are still missing and their where about are unknown.
Reports. In October 2008, Dr Stephen Kagoda, the permanent secretary in the ministry of Internal Affairs, said some of the missing children might have been sold in the Darfur, Sudan, as soldiers, sex slaves and cheap labourers.