RIGHTS-UGANDA: Army Denies Committing Atrocities against Civilians

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Joyce Mulama

NAIROBI, Sep 21 2005 (IPS) - Uganda’s army has been committing atrocities against civilians it is supposed to protect, says a leading human rights watchdog.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), based in New York, said the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF), had committed the crimes during its campaign against the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda.

“The abuses are not only committed by the LRA but also by UPDF. UPDF lacks a disciplinary system. Instead of it protecting citizens, it is contributing to abuses and this is increasing animosity between the people of northern Uganda and the central government,” Jemera Rone, a researcher for HRW, said Sep 19.

She was speaking to journalists in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, during the launch of a report titled ‘Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda’.

The 76-page report details how the rebels’ and army’s continuous enjoyment of complete immunity from prosecution has worsened the human rights situation in the region. For 19 years, the LRA, under the leadership of Joseph Kony, has been seeking to overthrow the country’s president Yoweri Museveni, and establish its own government based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

The LRA, which operates in northern Uganda, has been attacking civilians, chopping off parts of their bodies and killing them, as well as abducting children whom it recruits as fighters, labourers and sex slaves.

More than 50 percent of the LRA combatants are reportedly children aged six to 17 years. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than 20,000 children have been abducted to serve as child soldiers and sex slaves since the start of the conflict that has seen more than 1.9 million people uprooted from their homes and forced to live in internally displaced person’s (IDP) camps.

The army has been accused of committing atrocities such as rape, arbitrary arrests and detention, as well as beatings and killings in the camps.

“Human Rights Watch documented four negligent or willful killings of civilians by the UPDF in three weeks in February 2005 alone. This does not include one other person suspected of being summarily executed by the army and two people who reported being shot and badly injured,” said part of the HRW report.

Attempts by the HRW to get explanations from the government have been frustrating. “If complaints are made, there is no action taken or whenever there is feedback from the government, it is always in favour of the army,” Rone said.

HRW wants the United Nations, which it is accusing of laxity, to step in and help resolve the conflict, once described by the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland as the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

“The UN has not been interested to find a solution for northern Uganda. Of course, there has been UN relief; but at the political level, the UN has been almost silent,” Rone remarked.

The UN Security Council meeting held in Nairobi Nov. 2004 never touched on northern Uganda, but put pressure on Sudan to end its conflict. The pressure culminated into a peace agreement between the warring Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army and the government early this year, bringing an end to the country’s 21-year old war, the longest in Africa.

The HRW urged the UN to put pressure on the government to prosecute all perpetrators of human rights abuses in northern Uganda, including its own army.

But UPDF maintains that it has always taken action on its soldiers who have disrespected human rights.

“Our history shows that we have taken stern action against our officers who misbehave. In 2002, we executed two soldiers after they killed an Irish priest and robbed him in northern Uganda. In 2004, a captain was sentenced to life imprisonment for failing to protect a camp in the area. He went drinking and in the process, the camp was attacked by LRA,” Lt-Col. Shabaan Bantariza, UPDF’s spokesman, told IPS in a telephone interview from Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

“There is no single day we have failed to protect the people. There are more than 100 internally displaced persons’ camps in northern Uganda and each has a battalion of UPDF soldiers protecting them. The soldiers are paid to protect these people,” he stressed.

Bantariza says the government is equally concerned about the crisis, and has put in place measures aimed at bringing calm to the area including an amnesty law. Enacted in 2000, the law seeks to encourage LRA combatants to lay down their arms and surrender in exchange for amnesty packages of cash and other supplies to help them restart their lives.

So far 15,000 people have taken advantage of the amnesty, an exercise the HRW opposes.

“We do not oppose an amnesty for people who have not committed crimes against humanity, but we oppose an amnesty for people who have committed human rights abuses. These are crimes that should not go unpunished,” Rone said.

Analysts say for peace to return to northern Ugandan, Sudan should be engaged. Sudan has for a long time been accused of backing the LRA, in retaliation for an alleged support that Uganda offered Sudanese rebels.

Despite a 1999 agreement between the two countries to stop supporting each other’s rebel group, the Sudanese government has continued to accommodate the LRA, according to HRW. “Clearly the government of Sudan has not been willing to take the necessary steps to get the LRA because many times Kony has reportedly been spotted in Khartoum (Sudan’s capital),” Rone said.

Sudanese government has denied the HRW allegations. “Definitely, it’s not the Sudan government. We are trying to push away the LRA from our region. I do not think the government is involved,” Neimat Bilal, spokeswoman at the Sudan embassy in Nairobi told IPS.