UGANDA-POLITICS: Rebels Deny Involvement in Mediators’ Killing

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jun 20 1996 (IPS) - The brutal murder of two elders trying to broker peace between the Uganda government and rebels in the north of the country seems like a grim warning to freelance mediators.

The elders, Samson Okot-Ogoni and chief Olanya-Lagony, were murdered on Jun. 12 at Cwero, a village near the northern town of Gulu, over 200 km from the capital Kampala.

The two, both in their late 50s, were reportedly led away by rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) after the insurgents had interrogated them in the presence of Okot-Ogoni’s family.

Minutes later, the family heard some gun shots and when they followed them to check, they found the two lying in a pool of blood, dead.

Immediately Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni condemned the killing and contributed about 2,000 dollars to each of the families of the two elders for meeting burial expenses.

The government’s version of the story has, however, been rejected by the LRA. In a statement released here and obtained by IPS on Thursday, the LRA’s Secretary General Dominic S. Wanyama, dismissed the killing as the work of the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF — the army) which, he claimed, was bent on tarnishing the image of the rebel movement.

“The LRA would like to state here clearly and categorically that its fighters had no prior knowledge about the so-called peace negotiation initiators or about their killing until it came up in sections of the press in Uganda,” he said.

According to Wamanya, neither the LRA nor its leadership had contacts with “people calling themselves Acholi elders or contacts for peace-talk purposes” between the rebel movement and the Museveni regime.

He said the LRA had not mandated any Ugandan to broker the peace talks between itself and Museveni’s government. “Anybody claiming such status is only a government accomplice,” he warned.

The LRA, headed by herbalist Joseph Kony and propagating an idiosyncratic version of Christianity, began its fight against Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) in 1987, shortly after the defeat of the Holy Spirit Movement in the north led by Kony’s cousin Alice Lakwena.

THe LRA has taken advantage of bases in the Sudan as a springboard for raids into Uganda, Kampala alleges. Khartoum counter-claims that Uganda is supporting the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The LRA is dominated by Acholi tribesmen who straddle the Uganda/Sudan border. Their goal is to install a government in Uganda based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.

Rights groups like the London-based Amnesty International and Africa Watch have documented cases of atrocities ranging from rape to the cutting off of ears, lips and limbs of civilians suspected by the LRA of collaborating with the government.

The elders, apparently fed up with the suffering of their people, had decided to initiate the talks with the rebels and had written to Museveni asking him to give them some 153,000 dollars to execute the task.

The Ugandan leader, who has ruled out his government’s entering into direct talks with the rebels, said he could back the elders if they wished to initiate dialogue with them.

Dr James Obita, the LRA’s representative here, says the rebels insist that Museveni enter into direct talks with the LRA. “This movement will not entertain any call for peace talks if it doesn’t come from Yoweri Museveni himself,” he said.

Wanyama urged the government to use “civilised” means and methods if it were seriously interested in achieving lasting negotiated peace with the LRA. “We do not expect them to be sending elders to the bush allegedly for contacting rebels. This is just a UPDF trick to kill civilian elders in the bush for failing to bring home the rebels”, he said.

Obita warned that the LRA and the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF) have agreed to coordinate their activities against the government unless the government gives in to their demands.

The WNBF, led by Juma Oris, who had been a senior official in the regime of former dictator Idi Amin, is dominated by the people of West Nile — Madi, Lugbara, Aringa and Nubians — who had formed the bulk of Amin’s army.

After Amin’s ouster in 1979, they fled to neighbouring countries, mostly to the Sudan and Zaire, from where they continue to infiltrate Uganda.

Museveni said the Front has not so far committed any atrocity against civilians in the region. “I could pardon Juma Oris who is against killing civilians. His case can be treated differently unlike those of the authors of murders like Joseph Kony and his commanders,” Museveni told the state-run Uganda television two weeks ago.

In April, a top Museveni aide expressed doubt about defeating the LRA. “I am beginning to believe that the Acholi actually support Kony,” Maj-Gen Salim Saleh, Uganda’s National Reserve Force Commander was quoted as saying by the ‘East African’, a regional business weekly.

Instead of military might, Saleh, Museveni’s half-brother, instead suggested a loan scheme to help develop the potentially agriculturally-rich region. “The Acholi have the capacity to reject Kony if they stop seeing themselves as empty-handed,” he said.

The assessment is based on the skewered development path of Uganda where the south and southerners are benefiting from a business boom under Museveni’s government while the north remains marginalised, unstable and resentful.

To break the ice, Obita urged Museveni to seriously consider the idea of a peaceful negotiation. “It should be pretty clear to Museveni that it is not going to be easy for him to crush or eliminate us from the Ugandan Society. Let him swallow his pride and talk peace with us. There is no other way because as far as we are concerned, we won’t surrender to Museveni,” he said.