Tag Archives: Joseph Kony

Ongwen Trial Continues: JRP Endeavors to Bridge Divides between the Community and the Court Room

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“You could see people in the court room laughing and even Dominic Ongwen would fall behind his hands,” said Justice and Reconciliation Project Head of Office, Mr. Okwir Isaac Odiya. “[Ongwen] was genuinely happy with the testimony given.” As the defense team continued to mount its case, Mr. Odiya journeyed to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to monitor the trial on behalf of JRP.

The image of the accused in a fit of giggles seems almost incongruous with the case itself. Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army as a young boy, Ongwen eventually commanded the Sinia brigade.  He is accused of 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including abducting children to use as soldiers and sex slaves.

The defense argument is thoroughly unique. Lawyers, led by Counsel Krispus Ayena, assert that Joseph Kony had spiritual power over his army. Thus, Ongwen was not only indoctrinated. He was possessed by spirits. Ayena brought forward a number of witnesses, including a local chief and traditional Ajwaka or Witch Doctor. These witnesses explained the depth of the spiritual realm and, through it, the control Kony exerted over his followers. In other words, Ongwen’s actions were not his own.

According to Mr. Odiya, There was little cross examination, and the judge asked questions only to clarify. Similarly, observers leaned in with rapt attention, at first listening only to understand. Ayena’s argument is certainly surprising and even tricky, but not without the possibility of success. “If the court allows there is a spirit world, the case may be dismissed,” Mr. Odiya said.

The defense team also strove to prove that the Uganda People’s Defense Forces were culpable in the insurgency. Blame has thus far fallen primarily on the rebels, and history has ignored government crimes. Ayena asserts that exposing these atrocities now may pave the way for future prosecution.

Meanwhile, Ongwen has been well cared for in The Hague. His condition stands in sharp contrast to the experiences of fellow rebel Thomas Kwoyelo, who has spent the past decade in the overcrowded Luzira prison. Ongwen is given a monthly allowance to buy food and clothes. This allows him a level of financial security that many Ugandans lack, particularly in conflict affected areas. He has also become an excellent cook, often preparing meals for his defense team, and learned to read and write in English and play the piano.

Gaps in knowledge about the court are striking. While many residents of the Acholi Sub-Region have followed the case through community screenings, run by the ICC, few understand its intricacies or the manifold arguments put forward by the defense. Some even fear for Ongwen’s life. During a JRP focus group last month, a resident of Pajule said, “Killing Ongwen will not raise up those who died.”

The clear next step is to bring information about the case and arguments made back to the communities. Specifically, Mr. Odiya hopes to make the court process and the rights of the accused clear going forward.

In addition to attending trial sessions, Mr. Odiya participated in a number of meetings with court officials. He spoke at length the victims’ council and the prosecution team as well as the Registrar of the court and Director of External Division, among other official and identified multiple programmatic areas to complement the court process.

Whether Ongwen is proved innocent or guilty, the society needs repair.  Reconciliation is crucial and war-time wounds must be healed. Mr. Odiya will focus on leading JRP to advocate and contribute in fostering ‘beyond court room’ initiatives.

End of search for Joseph Kony is a blow for victims

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People attend memorial prayers for the Atiak massacre of 1995 on 19 April 2017. Oryem Nyeko.
People attend memorial prayers for the Atiak massacre of 1995 on 19 April 2017. Oryem Nyeko.

Even though 22 years have passed since the Lord’s Resistance Army rounded up, abducted and massacred hundreds at a trading centre in the Ugandan town of Atiak the community there still comes together every year to commemorate the events of April 1995.

Every year memorial prayers for the massacre take place at a primary school a short distance from where it took place. The prayers bring people from all walks of life, from children who are too young to remember the 20 year war, to elderly people who still bear the memory of loved ones that were lost and never found. A few outsiders also attend to show solidarity.

The purpose of memorial prayers in northern Uganda are often twofold. First, they allow the community to pay respects to the many victims of LRA’s war with the Ugandan government. Second, they bring the community together to draw wider attention to their experiences. In this way, they are used as a tool to make calls to the government and other actors for their justice and reconciliation needs to be addressed.

These kinds of events are significant for a region where hopes are high for redress for years of conflict. But progress here is slow. For instance, a national policy for transitional justice that was meant to provide the means to a reparations programme, truth-telling commissions and traditional justice, among other things, has delayed for years in the Ugandan cabinet with no word on when it will become a reality.

Even though we have seen headway in terms of justice with the ongoing proceedings against alleged LRA commanders Thomas Kwoyelo and Dominic Ongwen there are still gaps. Thomas Kwoyelo’s trial at the High Court of Uganda’s International Crimes Division is fraught with delays while Dominic Ongwen’s trial at the ICC, though progressing, is not entirely reflective of the scope of the atrocities that were committed and the range of perpetrators that existed during the LRA-Government of Uganda war.

So when the news came that Ugandan and United States forces were withdrawing troops from their hunt for the LRA and its leader Joseph Kony the hopes of communities like have Atiak suffered another blow. This move comes despite the fact that Kony is still subject to an indictment by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Already in Uganda notions of international criminal justice exist on shaky ground, with the slow moving transitional justice processes here and the criticisms that institutions like the ICC regularly face. With this withdrawal, however, the likelihood of accountability as well as redress in the form of reparations for victim communities is reduced even further.

The reason that was given for the withdrawal does not help. Ugandan forces are reported to have made the decision to end the pursuit of the LRA because the mission in doing so was “already achieved”. This is problematic because it reinforces the message to victims of the atrocities that are alleged against Kony, as well as their communities, that accountability for the crimes that were committed during the war are not a priority.

Northern Ugandan communities themselves hear and are acutely aware of the meaning of messages like these. Many have come to terms with the fact that they must look towards themselves for redress rather than depend on others. This year, for example, the Atiak memorial prayers were focused on moving towards economic empowerment for the community. During the ceremony a religious leader urged the community to “find ways to work together for a better future.”

But do victims of conflict and their communities in Uganda have to exist in space where they are on their own? To respond to this, the conversation around accountability, justice and reconciliation needs to be shifted to the perspective of the people to whom it matters the most. If, for example, as much money, time and resources that was invested in the hunt for the LRA was instead used to support communities such as Atiak in their pursuit of justice then the impact would have been felt. Accountability for the crimes that were committed cannot be another area of redress for which northern Ugandan communities cannot depend on.

Oryem Nyeko works with the Justice and Reconciliation Project in Gulu, Uganda. He can be found on twitter at @oryembley. This article was originally published on Coalition for the International Criminal Court and is published here with permission.

 

Attiak Massacre Memorial Prayers 04/20/2012, Parts 1 & 2

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[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoaY28XUxpg&feature=youtu.be’]

Part 1 of footage of the 17th annual Attiak Massacre Memorial Prayers in Attiak, northern Uganda on April 20, 2012. Filmed by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP).

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4lpjfoN8rA&feature=relmfu’]

Part 2 of footage of the 17th annual Attiak Massacre Memorial Prayers in Attiak, northern Uganda on April 20, 2012. Filmed by the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP).

#Ugandans 2012: An article by JRP’s co-founder Erin Baines

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Our co-founder and advisor, Dr. Erin Baines, has written a response to the media phenomenon by Invisible Children, “Kony 2012.” (As many of you are aware, “Kony 2012,” is a short film by IC that has garnered more than 75 million views in less than a week.) Erin’s article, titled “#Ugandans 2012,” highlights the work of many local organizations in northern Uganda who have been working tirelessly for peace and justice for conflict-related atrocities.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on  Twitter to read similar articles that highlight local peacebuilders and their reactions to this latest campaign to put an end to LRA violence.

And as always, you can view all of our past publications on this site to learn more about the dimensions of the conflict and victims’ views on justice and reconciliation for northern Uganda and conflict-affected regions.

“Taking ‘Kony 2012′ Down A Notch,” Justice in Conflict blog, 7 March 2012

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“Taking ‘Kony 2012′ Down A Notch,” Justice in Conflict blog, 7 March 2012
http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/

JRP is cited (below: “majority of Acholi people”) in reference to our December situational analysis on amnesty.

By Mark Kersten

As we speak, one of the most pervasive and successful human rights based viral campaigns in recent memory is underway. Invisible Children’s ‘Kony 2012‘ campaign has taken Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and every other mainstream social media refuge by storm. In many ways, it is quite impressive. But there’s one glaring problem: the campaign reflects neither the realities of northern Ugandan nor the attitudes of its people. In this context, this post examines the explicit and implicit claims made by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign and tests them against the empirical record on the ground.

Before jumping into the fray, however, I should preface the post by noting that, in many ways, Invisible Children have done a fantastic job in advocating for the rights of northern Ugandans, highlighting the conflict and providing tangible benefits to victims and survivors of LRA brutality. Indeed, this post is not intended to take aim at Invisible Children as an organization but rather to debunk some of the myths its ‘Kony 2012′ campaign is propagating.

The Problem is Popularity? 

Kony 2012 is about making Joseph Kony, the leader of the notorious LRA, famous because, the line of reasoning goes, if everyone knew him, no one would be able to stand idly by as he waged his brutal campaign of terror against the people of East Africa.

I am actually stupefied that any analysis of the ‘LRA question’ results in the identification of the problem being that “Kony isn’t popular enough”. The reality is that few don’t know who Joseph Kony is in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region, making it all-too-apparent that this isn’t about them, their views or their experiences. But even more puzzling is that Joseph Kony is one of the best known alleged war criminals in the world – including in the United States. This is the case in large part because of the advocacy of Western NGOs, including Invisible Children and the Enough Project as well as the ICC arrest warrants issued against Kony and his senior command.

I would understand if this were the 1990s or even the early 2000s when the misery plaguing northern Uganda flew completely under the radar. I would understand if this campaign was about the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But a campaign in 2012, premised on Joseph Kony not being famous enough is just folly.

'Kony 2012'

A poster from the ‘Kony 2012’ campaign. (Poster: Invisible Children)

Umm…what about northern Ugandans?

It is hard to respect any documentary on northern Uganda where a five year-old white boy features more prominently than any northern Ugandan victim or survivor. Incredibly, with the exception of the adolescent northern Ugandan victim, Jacob, the voices of northern Ugandans go almost completely unheard.

It isn’t hard to imagine why the views of northern Ugandans wouldn’t be considered: they don’t fit with the narrative produced and reproduced in the insulated echo chamber that produced the ‘Kony 2012′ film.

‘Kony 2012′, quite dubiously, avoids stepping into the ‘peace-justice’ question in northern Uganda precisely because it is a world of contesting and plural views, eloquently expressed by the northern Ugandans themselves. Some reports suggest that the majority of Acholi people continue to support the amnesty process whereby LRA combatants – including senior officials – return to the country in exchange for amnesty and entering a process of ‘traditional justice’. Many continue to support the Ugandan Amnesty law because of the reality that it is their own children who constitute the LRA. Once again, this issue is barely touched upon in the film. Yet the LRA poses a stark dilemma to the people of northern Uganda: it is now composed primarily of child soldiers, most of whom were abducted and forced to join the rebel ranks and commit atrocities. Labeling them “victims” or “perpetrators” becomes particularly problematic as they are often both.

Furthermore, the crisis in northern Uganda is not seen by its citizens as one that is the result of the LRA. Yes, you read that right. The conflict in the region is viewed as one wherein both the Government of Uganda and the LRA, as well as their regional supporters (primarily South Sudan and Khartoum, respectively) have perpetrated and benefited from nearly twenty-five years of systemic and structural violence and displacement. This pattern is what Chris Dolan has eloquently and persuasively termed ‘social torture‘ wherein both the Ugandan Government and the LRA’s treatment of the population has resulted in symptoms of collective torture and the blurring of the perpetrator-victim binary.

Kony and Egeland

Kony and his former second in command, Vincent Otti, with former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland (Photo: New York Times)

The Solution?

Given Invisible Children’s problematic identification of the issue, it becomes impossible for them to come up with an appropriate vision of resolving the crisis.

Invisible Children is, perhaps rightly, proud that it put the ‘LRA question’ on the Obama administration’s agenda. In this context, last year’s announcement that the administration would send 100 military ‘advisors’ to Uganda was widely celebrated. But this triumphalism occludes key realities.

The sending of 100 troops was not, in any sense, an altruistic move by the administration. First, it went unreported that many of the troops were already in Uganda. Second, the announcement was, at least in part, a tit-for-tat response for the Government of Uganda’s military engagement in Somalia – where the US refuses to deploy troops. As Matt Brown of the Enough Project conceded:

“The U.S. doesn’t have to fight al-Qaida-linked Shabab in Somalia, so we help Uganda take care of their domestic security problems, freeing them up to fight a more dangerous – or a more pressing, perhaps – issue in Somalia.

It is clear that the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign sees the 100 US troop allotment as inadequate. Here they are right – 100 US troops is not the solution. But their own answer is highly problematic.

We know what the makers of “Kony 2012″ believe should happen but they won’t say it explicitly, except to say that Kony must be “stopped”.

Obama’s orders for his 100 troops – presumably supported by those behind ‘Kony 2012′ – is to “kill or capture” Joseph Kony. I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that many of the same individuals who will form the legion of participants in ‘Kony 2012′ were on the streets celebrating the killing of Osama bin Laden. It thus likely holds that they bought into the belief, proffered by Obama himself, that bin Laden’s killing amounted to justice and if you didn’t agree, you should get your head checked.

The solution then, is something similar: an American-led intervention into at least four countries where the LRA is or has been active (Uganda, the DRC, the Central African Republic and South Sudan) to hunt down Kony. Capturing him, after all, is secondary to “stopping” him.

The idea of “stopping Kony”, of course plays into the narrative created by the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign where what actually happens to Kony and the LRA is irrelevant. The unspecific aim of “stopping” him is sufficient. Who, after all, doesn’t want Kony “stopped”? But then what? If Kony is killed or captured, then what? What happens to the other members of the LRA? ‘Kony 2012′ offers no answers here.

In this context, it is worthwhile remembering that massive regional military solutions (Operations Iron Fist and Lightning Thunder most recently), with support from the US, have thus far failed to dismantle or “stop” the LRA. These failures have created serious and legitimate doubts that the ‘LRA question’ is one that can be resolved by military means.

Incredibly, there is no mention in the film or the campaign that northern Ugandans are currently enjoying the longest period of peace since the conflict began in 1986. Virtually every single northern Ugandan I spoke to during my own field research believes that there is peace in the region. While sporadic violence continues, particularly as a result of bitter land disputes, there have been no LRA attacks in years. In the mid 2000s, the ‘LRA problem’ was exported out of Uganda. The LRA is currently residing in the DRC, CAR, and perhaps parts of South Sudan and even Darfur. Today, land issues and the recent Walk to Work crisis are higher on the agenda than the LRA in northern Uganda.

Lastly, killing Kony cannot resolve the actual sources of the crisis which are far more structural than superficial (to put it lightly) analyses like ‘Kony 2012′ would like to admit. As respected scholars of northern Uganda, Mareike Schomerus, Tim Allen, and Koen Vlassenroot, recently argued,

“Until the underlying problem — the region’s poor governance — is adequately dealt with, there will be no sustainable peace.”

Kony (left) with Otti. (Photo: AFP)

The Need for a Sober Second Thought

In the end, ‘Kony 2012′ falls prey to the obfuscating, simplified and wildly erroneous narrative of a legitimate, terror-fighting, innocent partner of the West (the Government of Uganda) seeking to eliminate a band of lunatic, child-thieving, machine-gun wielding mystics (the LRA). The main beneficiary of this narrative is, once again, the Ugandan Government of Yoweri Museveni, whose legitimacy is bolstered and – if the ‘Kony 2012′ campaign is ‘successful’ – will receive more military funding and support from the US.

Of course, as a viral campaign launched through social media, ‘Kony 2012′ is impressive, if not unprecedented. It will, undoubtedly, mobilize and morph a horde of sincere American youths into proxy war criminal hunters. It will further succeed in increasing the ‘popularity’ of Joseph Kony and the LRA in the United States. But it will do so for many of – if not all – the wrong reasons.

I remember when I was in grade school and a teacher told the students that it was actually difficult to fail. “You have to try to fail,” he said. If ‘Kony 2012′ is to be judged by its reflection of the realities on the ground in northern Uganda and how it measures up against the empirical record, the makers of Kony 2012 tried – and succeeded.

——————————

UPDATE: I’ve now published a response to the main criticisms that this post has inspired. See here: Taking ‘Kony2012′ Down a Notch – Responding to Criticism.

Check out this excellent account by Daniel Solomon over at his blog, Securing Rights.

Also, big thanks to my friend and colleague, Paul Kirby, for his insightful comments on a draft of this post.

“US Troop Deployment Revisited – The Hunt for Kony,” Justice in Conflict blog, 3 Nov. 2011

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“US Troop Deployment Revisited – The Hunt for Kony,” Justice in Conflict blog, 3 Nov. 2011
http://justiceinconflict.org/2011/11/03/us-troop-deployment-revisited-%E2%80%93-the-hunt-for-kony/

By Patrick Wegner

US President Barack Obama’s decision to send 100 combat armed military advisors to Uganda, Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Southern Sudan made worldwide headlines about three weeks ago. The controversial decision and discussions about its consequences brought the LRA conflict back into the headlines after the world had all but forgotten about the steady trickle of mutilations, killings and abductions mainly committed in the DRC and CAR by the LRA. One thing has become very clear to me in interviews with diplomats and staff of international organizations that are working in the context of the conflict: the LRA is no longer seen as a threat for regional stability. This means that the LRA conflict has ceased to matter in the big picture of geopolitics. It is another one of those low intensity conflicts that claim the lives of innocent civilians on a daily basis but are not endangering the security interests of powerful nations. What does the US troop deployment mean in this context?

Since foreign policy practitioners do not see the conflict as a risk to regional stability, President Obama’s move could be regarded as a surprise. Yet, it makes perfect sense both in a US domestic as well as in an international perspective. The US has seen constant campaigning by civil society organizations like Enough and Invisible Children who pressure the US administration to do something about the deaths of innocent civilians in Central Africa. The campaigning led to the signing of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act by Barack Obama in May 2010. A high ranking diplomat I talked to a couple of weeks before the troop deployment told me that he expects the US to ‘do something’ in the LRA context soon, as a Congress report on the LRA Act was upcoming in late October and the administration needed to be seen doing something. His prediction proved right.

From the international perspective, Uganda is of high strategic importance in the region. The Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) is one of the strongest armies in the area. It plays a major role in the UN Mission in Somalia, provides staff for UNAMID in Darfur, and plays the leading role in regional efforts to hunt down the LRA. The fact that the UPDF is providing troops for these missions removes pressure from Western nations to deploy their own troops in the region. Finally, the recent discovery of oil has just increased Uganda’s importance. The decision can therefore also be seen as an acknowledgement of the important role Uganda is playing in the region.Many Ugandans I talked to are deeply distrustful of the US intervention. Most people think that the US is showing up now, years after the war ended in northern Uganda, because oil has been discovered in Amuru. Yet, the LRA is no longer a Ugandan issue. The LRA has spread over three states in the region, and people are still dying. So there are valid arguments for intervening on humanitarian grounds. But what is the impact of the deployment we can expect on the ground? Critics like Lindsay McCain of the Justice and Reconciliation Project from northern Uganda say that the deployment of US military advisors will reinforce the military logic of the conflict and lead to the death of innocent abducted children that travel with the LRA. She criticises the lack of a humanitarian component and a focus on protecting civilians in the affected regions from LRA attacks. I think those arguments are valid and point out a significant weakness of the US approach to combating the LRA. Yet, the deployment of US advisors might still help to stop the conflict and end the suffering of civilians in the longer term.

The US has been supporting the UPDF for several years. In the beginning, this support was mainly given through financial aid for the military budget. During Operation Lightning Thunder, that marked the end of negotiation efforts during the Juba Peace Process and was meant to ‘wipe out’ the LRA, US military advisors provided the UPDF with information and advice. Still the operation failed. Afterwards, the US supported the hunt for Kony and the remaining LRA rebels through providing the UPDF with GPS data and satellite imagery. Yet, the UPDF was not sufficiently equipped to act on that information. On the one hand, they had no means to use the exact GPS data the US provided them with, on the other hand the UPDF rapid response capacities were insufficient to hunt down the LRA fast enough.

The deployment of US military advisors on the ground who can help the UPDF to make use of the data forwarded by US military intelligence could make a real difference. The UPDF has been close to capturing or killing Kony at least twice in recent years. In August 2009, the UPDF ran into Joseph Kony’s bodyguards in CAR and killed several of them in the ensuing gunfight, yet Kony managed to escape while being chased by the UPDF.

In October 2011 the UPDF again ran into Kony’s entourage according to the UPDF spokesman. Kony moves inside several circles of security perimeters. Three rings of bodyguards move constantly with him, and as soon as the outer ring engages in combat, Kony has the opportunity to quickly flee into the opposite direction. But chances are that Kony will eventually run out of luck if the UPDF is able to track his group more closely with the help of US military advisors.

We might well see the end of Joseph Kony’s flight soon. Whether this would mean the end of the conflict is not clear though. The LRA has splintered into ever smaller groups and it is not clear in how far Kony still has full control of them. Independent LRA groups may be roaming through CAR and DRC abducting and killing civilians for years after Kony’s death or capture. Additionally, UN sources have told me that many armed groups and militias in the DRC have started mimicking LRA attacks to cover up their robberies. It is hard to say how much of the ‘LRA activity’ we see in the region is actually local banditry.

Finally, on an interesting side note, a former top LRA Commander I was able to talk to told me that Joseph Kony had announced as early as 1998 that his spirits had revealed to him that Ugandans would bring in the US to hunt him. Kony made a prophecy that the war would end when the US becomes involved. They would not be able to catch him, but would help the Acholi of northern Uganda to recover from the war. Kony said that his spirits revealed to him that he would just disappear in the jungle, ‘like Moses disappeared after leading his people to the Holy Land’. The spirits told him that the US would come to search for him, only to eventually find out that he had disappeared without a trace for ever.