The rare process and ceremony of mato oput is undertaken only in the case of intentional or accidental killing of an individual. The ceremony involves two clans bringing together the perpetrator and the victim in a quest for restoring social harmony.
Mato oput begins by separating the affected clans, mediation to establish the ‘truth’ and payment of compensation according to by-laws. The final ritual, ‘drinking the bitter root’ is a day-long ceremony involving symbolic acts designed to reunite the clans.
The photos below illustrate the ‘beating of the stick’ followed by the sacrifice and exchange of sheep by both parties; the mixing of the bitter oput root with kwete and blood to be drunk by both parties as a symbol of washing away the bitterness; and the eating of the liver, to restore good relations.
The ceremony is followed by a celebration and restored relationships.
The cleansing of an area through ritual sacrifice to chase away discontented spirits (and prevent misfortune) or to appease the ancestors (to encourage good fortune). The ritual is being done at areas of massacres or war related fighting to prevent further deaths from occurring in the area.
As one Elder stated: “The issue of communal ceremonies came about because of the conflict and the magnitude of the problem associated with it….The people have lost their shrines (kac) and in Acholi these shrines are supposed to be in the original homestead or clan. The traditional rituals need money [but] our people cannot afford them. So we felt these communal ceremonies would help those who cannot organize it on their own.”
On October 23rd 2002, an estimated forty-four fighters of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) entered Omot sub-county from Par Samuelo Acak, near the river Agogo. They were given instruction by their LRA Commander, “as soon as we cross the river, abduct whoever you come across until we reach Corner Gang pa Aculu in Opota Trading Centre.”3 The team, consisting mostly of young soldiers, first moved North East, abducting twelve people in Lawal Ode, an additional eight people in Lalur Onyol and finally another twelve people were abducted from Latin Ling before they reached the point of slaughter.
The Opota Trading Centre at Corner Gang Pa Aculu was the site where twenty-eight people lost their lives in the brutal and dehumanizing Omot massacre. People were murdered, cut into pieces and then placed in cooking pots in front of dozens of witnesses.
This report is the first systematic documentation of the massacre that took place in Omot. Eight years later, the community has far from achieved reconciliation and restitution. The people of Omot have been stripped of their right to justice; the wrongs committed against them unacknowledged by Government or LRA, no system of redress has been explored. What is more, the community is divided. Victims of the massacre continue to resent the clan of ‘Samuel’, a young resident who was recruited by the LRA and then later ran away with a gun, leading ultimately to the Omot massacre as retaliation. The community does not feel they have been compensated by Samuel’s family for the deaths that occurred as a result of his desertion. In Omot, it is important for support to be provided for community reconciliation.
As Long as You Live, You Will Survive recommends that the Government of Uganda:
Formally acknowledge the Omot massacre of 2002 as well as all other massacres that have occurred in communities in Northern Uganda;
Recognize and redress their failure to protect Ugandan citizens from the LRA attack;
Hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes;
Support local approaches to justice and reconciliation that will address tensions within;
Provision of reparations;
Provision of a memorial designed and constructed with victims.
A former LRA Major is accepted back by the community in Pajule
Simon Watmon was abducted as a young father of two small children by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in 1996. After 5 years and at the rank of a junior commander, he risked everything to return home via Sudan. Settled back in Pajule, he encountered many of the same challenges faced by all those who escaped: poverty, stigma and rejection by his family. Rather than be defeated by these, Simon emerged as an informal leader amongst his peers and is today recognized as a peace builder at the community level.
This Field Note documents the experience of Simon. It is a case study of how former Lord’s Resistance Army captives are not just victims, but can also be agents of social change and reconciliation. His story is illustrative of previous JRP reports: With or Without Peace: Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration in northern Uganda and Sharing the Burden of the Past: Peer support and self help among former Lord’s Resistance Army youth. These two reportsoffered insights into the challenges currentlyfaced by returning combatants and how apeaceful and successful disarmamentdemobilization and reintegration (DDR)process, and coping with the devastatingimpact of the twenty year conflict in NorthernUganda, could take place.
A girl carrying water walks on top of the mass grave at Barlonyo
Twenty-six kilometres north of Lira town in northern Uganda, a quiet displaced person’s camp called Barlonyo lies inconspicuously next to the River Moroto. The tranquil setting belies its horrible distinction as the location of one of the largest single massacres committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army during its 23-year insurgency. In the space of less than three hours on the late afternoon of 21 February 2004, over 300 people were brutally murdered by LRA rebels and an unknown number were abducted.
Camp residents were burned alive inside their huts, hacked to death with machetes, stabbed with bayonets, clubbed with sticks and shot as they fled. The bellies of pregnant women were slit open, their not-yet-formed babies thrown into the fires. Others were abducted and marched north into Acholi-land. Many died in captivity of violence, sickness, or starvation. The ultimate fate of several abductees remains unknown.
This Field Note documents what happened in Barlonyo on that fateful day when LRA Commander Okot
Odhiambo ordered his soldiers to “kill every living thing.” The victims of Barlonyo beg for justice; not only for the unimaginable acts of the LRA, but the lack of protection afforded the civilian population that day, and in the absence of acknowledgment of what happened there. The Government of Uganda must forward a comprehensive justice strategy that addresses wrong doing and heals the wounds that continue to divide the country.
Two residents stand at the site where their sons were killed in the massacre
In the early morning hours of 24 July 2002, the villages around Mucwini awoke to the bloodied corpses of 56 men, women and children. The massacre was a deliberate and ruthless retaliation by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) after a local man they had abducted escaped from them with a gun. After they were finished with their ‘work,’ the LRA wrote a letter to the populace, blaming them for the massacre and threatening more killings if the stolen gun was not recovered.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the victims accused the escaped man of purposely orchestrating the massacre to resolve a long standing land dispute between his clan and that of the majority of victims. Since the massacre, both clans have ceased relations and have threatened retaliation if the issue is not resolved using the traditional mechanism of Mato Oput (drinking the bitter root). The victim clan demands the payment Kwor, or death compensation and the elders have busied themselves trying to cool tensions. In the absence of formal justice, the victims attempt to come to terms with what happened using what is available to them: traditional justice mechanisms.
The aftermath of the Mucwini massacre is an important case study of the justice and reconciliation challenges facing peace builders as the Juba Peace Talks conclude. Documenting the events of the massacre and attempts by victims to come to terms with it, this Field Note identifies three important lessons for understanding the impact of violence on community level relations in northern Uganda, and the prospects for transitional justice. First, it illustrates how the local victim population copes with the aftermath of gross atrocity in the absence of accountability. Secondly, it suggests the need to revisit the potential role of traditional justice mechanisms to resolve local conflicts. Finally, it highlights how the war has exacerbated underlying tensions around land ownership.
Dominic Ongwen was around ten years old when he was abducted on his way to school by the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). He was trained as a ‘child soldier’ to fight against the Government of Uganda and forced to kill, mutilate, loot from and rape civilians. He became so efficient and fearlessly loyal to his superiors that he was eventually ‘promoted’ to the ‘inner circle’ of the LRA. In October 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Ongwen for crimes against humanity, including massacres and the abduction and enslavement of children. As such, Ongwen is the first known person to be charged with the same war crimes of which he is also victim.
Ongwen’s case raises vexing justice questions. How should individual responsibility be addressed in the context of collective victimization? What agency is available to individuals who are raised within a setting of extreme brutality? How can justice be achieved for Ongwen and for the victims of the crimes he committed?
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)’s use of abducted children and youth has been much researched, and the horrors of their experiences in captivity and difficulties reintegrating into their communities recorded. Nonetheless, the existing disarmament, demobilization and reintegration strategies pursued to date are brief and insufficient interventions.
This project was conducted by Justice and Reconciliation Project and Quaker Peace & Social Witness. Both organizations had encountered in the course of previous research the existence of self-formed groups of formerly abducted persons (FAPs) / former-LRA, and wanted to assess the role they could and did play in the process of grassroots level reintegration and reconciliation.
Our findings suggest that former LRA peer support groups are an important and effective vehicle for reintegration and reconciliation, all the more so given the paucity of alternative long-term reintegration provision. Former LRA peer groups positively affect:
economic reintegration including provision of livelihoods and microfinance
From July to October 2007, Quaker Peace and Social Witness (QPSW) and the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) conducted qualitative research with ex-LRA fighters on the subject of peer support and reintegration in northern Uganda. These in-depth discussions revealed a number of pressing insights on how to conduct a peaceful and successful DDR process.
