Tag Archives: Memorialisation

Barlonyo vigil

Standing together for the commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the Barlonyo massacre

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Barlonyo vigil
Mourners light candles in memory of Barlonyo victims during a candlelight vigil, 2012.

On behalf of the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), it is my honour to celebrate with you the lives of those who perished during the tragic Barlonyo massacre of 21st February 2004. I am honoured by the legacy set by the victims’ community to commemorate the lives of their loved ones on an annual basis.

Remembrance has proven to be a strong tool for social reconstruction especially in dealing with trauma, conflict and tension, and also in addressing stigma within the community. It provides an opportunity to understand shared conflict experiences and for victim communities to chart a way forward to deal with their transition challenges for harmonious coexistence.

Promoting justice and reconcililiation

Community memorialization is also a community relevant transitional justice approach to justice and reconciliation, an approach that needs to be supported by local government and international organizations to promote justice and reconciliation especially in the absence of official transitional justice framework. I want to applaud Lira district local government for taking up the challenge of leading the arrangement of this year’s Barlonyo memorial prayer as well as thank all partners that supported the process.

Over the last 11 years, JRP has played a key role in understanding and explaining the needs, concerns and interests of war-affected people in northern Uganda through research and documentation. Adopting a victim centered approach, we have built the capacity of many victim communities to play a lead role in advocating for justice, accountability and reconciliation as well as dealing with their conflict challenges on their own.

We have also supported community justice, accountability and reconciliation initiatives which have moved victims to another level in as far as social recovery is concerned. We are happy to see the community of Barlonyo, with whom we have worked with for a long time, keeping up the momentum to socially reconstruct their society by collaborating with other partners, especially local government.

Holistic approaches

In a survey we conducted in 2015 on opportunities for regional reconciliation, we found a number of justice, accountability and reconciliation needs within communities and between the different ethnic communities in northern Uganda. This is a huge transition challenge that calls for holistic approaches to provide substantive responses to the transition challenges.

I therefore urge the government of Uganda to pass the transitional justice policy of Uganda and expeditiously implement programs to answer the justice, accountability and reconciliation needs in war affected communities. This will go a long way realize sustainable peace and reconciliation in northern Uganda and achieve national unity.

In conclusion, I want to thank the community of Barlonyo and Lira district local government for initiating the commemoration of the 13th anniversary of the Barlonyo massacre. I urge every stakeholder for a positive remembrance through an approach that deals with conflict trauma, stigma as well as the reconciliation needs of the affected community.

JRP remains committed to support justice, accountability and reconciliation efforts of conflict affected people and we shall always be there for victims and with victims.

May the souls of those who perished rest in peace and their spirits leave to promote community and regional reconciliation.

Okwir Isaac Odiya is the Head of Office with the Justice and reconciliation Project

 

Monuments in Odek and Burcoro bring communities full circle

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When the Justice and Reconciliation Project’s Documentation team began working with the community of Odek in Gulu district in 2014, the sense was that the community wanted acknowledgment for the many violations they experienced during the war. As the ancestral home of LRA commander Joseph Kony, the area suffered the stigma of that association, and many there said that their experiences had been ignored over the years.

A similar feeling was held in Burcoro, a village in Awach sub-county, for survivors of an NRA operation where civilians, accused of being rebel supporters, were tortured, sexually violated, abducted and killed over the course of four days in April 1991.

So when this past week, the JRP’s Community Mobilisation department worked with those two communities to launch monuments to commemorate those experiences, it felt like the communities calls had come full circle.

In Odek, at the sub-county headquarters, on a white-tiled block the names of 44 people that died during an attack by the LRA on an internally-displaced persons’ camp there on 29 April 2004 are listed on a plaque (the LRA’s massacre, and other experiences are documented in JRP’s 2014 field note, “Forgotten Victims: Recounting Atrocities Committed in Odek sub-county by the LRA and NRA”). Clan chief Rwot Ocan Jimmy Luwala of Puranga and Gulu District Council Speaker, Okello Douglas Peter Okao, joined the community, survivors and relatives of the victims to officially launch this monument on 2 December 2015.

A week later, on 8 December, Burcoro Primary School – the scene of the NRA’s 1991 operation – also hosted community members, survivors and relatives to launch a monument in the shape of a tree for their experiences. The tree symbolizes the community’s experiences, in particular the place where a man called Kapere Alfoncio, who was accused of being a rebel, was shot and killed by fire squad on the final days of the operation. The launch of the monument was also used to share JRP’s field note “The Beasts at Burcoro”, which recounts events that took place, with the community.

Following a blessing of the monument by religious leaders in Burcoro, Resident District Commissioner (RDC) for Gulu, Okot Lapolo, received a memorandum from the Burcoro 1991 Military Operation Survivors Association addressed to Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, and calling for support. The RDC promised to deliver it to the president and to remind him about pledges he made in 2011 to provide compensation.

Survivors, relatives of victims, invited guests and the JRP team pose infront of the monument for the atrocities committed in Burcoro by the NRA in April 1991.

Now that both communities have their experiences documented and have monuments in place, they plan to host memorial prayers at their respective monument sites in the future to commemorate the events.

“Many people were thinking that their plight was not known but now they feel relieved,” a survivor of the Burcoro incident told me, “What was disturbing was the [fear that because the Burcoro incident was state-led] that if you exposed yourself as a victim, you may be in trouble.”

See pictures of both launches on JRP’s Facebook page.

Oryem Nyeko is the Communications and Advocacy Team Leader at JRP.

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Communities in Lango and Acholi work to memorialise their experiences

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A capacity building workshop is held in Parabongo earlier this year.
A capacity building workshop is held in Parabongo earlier this year.

With funding support from USAID-SAFE Program, the Community Mobilization department at JRP conducted a series of trainings on themes of memory and reconciliation with 39 members of Community Reconciliation (CORE) teams in seven communities across Lango and Acholi sub-regions. Held in May, 2015, these trainings covered a range of topics including conflict mitigation, peace building, forgiveness and reconciliation, gender mainstreaming in peace building and reconciliation programs, trauma healing and counseling skills, and memory and memorialization. This helped the members of the CORE teams to understand the importance of memorialization and to envision an ideal memory and reconciliation project for their communities.

During the training, the participants examined the following questions in order to come up with an ideal memory project for each of the seven communities:

  • What are the conflict events that occurred in your areas?
  • What conflict event do you want to remember?
  • How would you like to remember it?
  • What memory projects would promote healing, advocacy and reconciliation for your communities?
  • What ideal memory project can you implement in your community?

These guiding questions helped the CORE team members to come up with ideas for memory projects in consultation with their respective victims’ communities, which could be implemented within five months in their communities. The seven communities came up with the following innovative ideas for community memory projects which are now nearing successful completion.

Lukodi: The community of Lukodi chose to write a book which documents life before the war, and also emphasizes how culture has been eroded by war and makes suggestions on how it can be rejuvenated. They also chose to legally register the acquired piece of land which serves as the memorial site for the Lukodi massacre of 2004. This would enable the community to transfer a monument for the massacre which is in another area to this land and to develop the site.

Parabongo: The community of Parabongo, with guidance of the CORE team, chose to construct a new memorial stone to replace an older barely visible monument. They envisage having a more visible monument in memory of the people killed by LRA in Parabongo in 2006.

Atiak: Together with the CORE team, the victims’ community in Atiak chose to develop a list of conflict memorabilia to be preserved to document their memory of the war. They also decided to develop a profile of those who were killed in the 1995 massacre, and after verifying the list of names, they will engrave and place it onto a memorial monument. The community also pledged to facilitate a process of community-led documentation through the use of arts to preserve memories of events that became a turning point in the lives of the people of Atiak at the peak of the war.

Burcoro: The community of Burcoro chose to construct a monument in memory of the people killed during the military operation led by NRA in Burcoro in 1991. They wished to preserve memories of state-led atrocities that were never acknowledged.

Odek: The people of Odek also felt they were never publicly acknowledged to have suffered during the LRA war. To them, putting up a memorial monument would communicate what they went through in order for them to also be considered for post-conflict reconstruction services. They, therefore, chose to construct a memory stone in memory of the mass killing by LRA in Odek.

Barlonyo: The community of Barlonyo decided to beautify their memorial site in order to celebrate the lives of their loved ones who perished in the 2002 massacre. They chose to fence and beautify the memorial site with a variety of beautiful flowers blooming in gardens adjacent to well-paved walkways.

Abia: In Abia, the community chose to erect a monument in the form of a statue of a helpless woman which depicts their plight in the aftermath of the massacre of 2004. They also decided to make a painting on the wall of memorial school in memory of their war experiences.

JRP pledged to support the seven communities in the implementation of their respective community memory projects, which have been shaping well over the last five months. As the projects near completion, JRP is proud to reaffirm its support to showcase community-relevant approaches to justice, healing and reconciliation.

The Burcoro monument is underway!

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The monument to memorialise the experiences of the community of Burcoro during atrocities committed in April 1991.
The monument to memorialise the experiences of the community of Burcoro during atrocities committed in April 1991.

 

It’s almost ready! The construction of the monument for the Burcoro massacre of 1991 is underway and will be completed by the end of this month.

The memorial is the first of its kind for the community and is being built in the shape of the tree that where a man was chained and shot by an NRA firing squad after being falsely accused of being a rebel, according to witnesses.

In 2013, JRP documented the experiences of the community of Burcoro during the massacre in ‘The Beasts at Burcoro’. Read this field note here.

 

Creating spaces for memory #TransitionalJusticeFellowship

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The sign from Freedom Park, South Africa.
The sign from Freedom Park, South Africa.

In the past two weeks I have been participating in the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR)’s Transitional Justice in Africa Fellowship. The programme brings practitioners, scholars and researchers from across Africa to South Africa for three weeks to engage, share and learn from the different transitional justice journeys taking place on the continent. This years’ programme features seven people from Uganda, Burundi, DRC, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.

The first week was memorable because we focused on memory!

The fellowship began with four days in Gauteng with visits to memorial sites such as the Voortrekker monument (built in the late 1930s to remember the first Afrikaaners that traveled inwards from the southern coast of Africa during what is known as ‘The Great Trek’). The Voortrekker monument is a large mausoleum-like stone structure that broods over the city of Pretoria and, interestingly, another memorialisation site known as Freedom Park. More about that later.

On the inside walls of the monument is a 360 degree marble mural sculpture depicting the experiences of the Voorktrekkers as they made their travels. In the center of one wall is the depiction of Voortrekker leader Piet Retief being betrayed and murdered by Zulu leader, Dingane, after signing a peace agreement. The events are theatrically portrayed and speak to the monument’s martyrdom and sacrifice narrative. 90 degrees right to this Dingane’s death at the hands of ‘the Swazis’ is also displayed in cool white marble.

Juxtaposed with the Voortrekker monument and only a short drive away is Freedom Park. Freedom Park was commissioned by the South African government in 2000 and is characterised by two main areas – the first we visited, the Garden of Remembrance, is a sprawling 2.5 hectare composition of indoor and outdoor spaces that we were told are meant to foster contemplative thought and meditation. The second area is a museum dedicated to the history of Africa, called //hapo (‘dream’ in the Khoi language), from 3.6 million years ago. The total space of Freedom Park is 52 hectares!

“This must be a contested space where we can dialogue about where we are going.” –Freedom Park tour guide Bhadresh Kadra
“This must be a contested space where we can dialogue about where we are going.” –Freedom Park tour guide Bhadresh Kadra

In the Garden of Remembrance, indigenous African spiritualities are carefully incorporated to craft elaborate spaces where symbolism meets memorialisation. While inclusivity is a big deal at the Garden of Remembrance – the names of the areas are in different South African languages – the space is not without controversy. The ‘Wall of Names’ (an almost 700 metre wall of inscribed names of people that played a role in South Africa’s various conflicts) has apparently been met with criticism. The complex rules surrounding whose name goes on the wall means that Nelson Mandela’s name has not been approved just yet.

My favorite part of the fellowship so far has been a visit to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto. An actual museum is surrounded by a beautiful and simple public open area dedicated to remembering the 13 year old and other students killed during the student uprising against apartheid in the late 1970s. A  quote by the mother of the young man that carried Hector Pieterson after he had been shot is inscribed into a stone bench.

“Mbuyisa is or was my son. But he is not a hero. In my culture, picking up Hector is not an act of heroism. It was his job as a brother. If he left him on the ground and somebody saw him jumping over Hector. He would never be able to live here.” – Ma’Makhubu, Mbuyisa’s Mother
“Mbuyisa is or was my son. But he is not a hero. In my culture, picking up Hector is not an act of heroism. It was his job as a brother. If he left him on the ground and somebody saw him jumping over Hector. He would never be able to live here.” – Ma’Makhubu, Mbuyisa’s Mother

What is most powerful about the Hector Pieterson Memorial is that is placed in such a way and in an area that is very accessible to ordinary people. When visiting you are able to see schoolchildren, whose lives have been undoubtedly impacted by the sacrifices the students who are remembered here, walk by in their school uniforms as they make their way home. As I witnessed this it struck me that there is a void of public spaces for reflection and commemoration of Uganda’s conflict history. Spaces that are dedicated to memorialisation are usually made on the initiative of survivors and relatives of mass atrocities. Actual public spaces, such as the Independence Monument in Kampala, are simply closed off to the public. Similarly, in Burcoro political leaders prevent communities from memorialising their experiences while in Barlonyo and Atiak, data about those that were killed during their respective massacres is distorted by public officials.

The result is that discussions about Uganda’s conflict history are often remote and inaccessible to people that did not directly experience it. One wonders how future generations will access information about what happened in the past and thereby prevent it from happening again. A lesson I have learned during this process is that a public area, in say, central Kampala or Gulu, that acknowledges the experiences of Ugandans and provides for open discussion and contemplation, whether contested or not, would be a step forward in Uganda’s transitional journey.

Follow me on twitter for more updates @oryembley!

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How the people of Odek are remembering the past and honoring their loved ones

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A sign for Odek Primary School in Gulu District.
A sign for Odek Primary School in Gulu District.

Memory refers to the processes that are used to acquire, store, retain and later retrieve information. It is also the process of creating meaning over the past events. In lay man’s term I can say that ‘making the past becoming part of me i.e. looking at the past conflict events positively’. Memorialisation is honoring the lives of people or events by preserving memories which is one of the key parts of transitional justice that is vital for promoting recognition and acknowledgement of past violations of human rights and also bringing healing, reconciliation to those whose rights were violated.

Odek is a sub-county located in the eastern direction of Gulu District in northern Uganda near to the border between Lango and Acholi that was also severely affected by the two decade war. It is also the birth place of the LRA leader Joseph Kony the LRA leader. This is one area that also experienced two remarkable massacres that were perpetrated by both government soldiers and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). Last year, JRP documented the experiences of the community in its field note, “Forgotten Victims”.

For long, the people of Odek have spoken about wanting to honor their loved ones who were massacred during the conflict. This year, with support from USAID-SAFE, the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) is working with Odek as one of seven northern Ugandan communities that will be supported to implement a memory project.

To do this a Community Reconciliation (CORE) team, a team of five people that were selected to represent Odek community from the Kica Ber (forgiveness is good) group, were trained on various topics and among which was Memory and Memorialization. During the training, the team went through a process to come out with what their ideal memory project would be, which they chose as the construction of a monument.

During our recent monitoring and support visit, the chairman Local Counselor (LC) III of Odek said: ‘For long the community of Odek has desired to have a monument constructed here and at last we are going to have one. I am very grateful to JRP for their interventions here in Odek. The first one was the documentation of the Odek massacres that created awareness to other groups like the ICC [which] has now visited Odek to seek our opinion on Dominic Ongwen’s case.’

JRP will continue to work with Odek as part of the project ‘Across Ethnic Boundaries: Promoting Regional Reconciliation in Acholi and Lango Sub-Regions’ which aims to promote conflict memory and promote reconciliation at community and regional level through community and public dialogues as well as training on transitional justice. Other communities JRP is working with are Lukodi, Burcoro, Atiak, Parabongo, Abia and Barlonyo.