|
IRIN Web Special on the crisis in Northern Uganda
Acholi Society
Internally displaced children at the Awer IDP camp.
Credit: OCHA (2003)
|
Is Acholi society dying?
It is difficult to find anyone in northern Uganda's Acholi sub-region who has not been affected by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency.
Denis Mwaka, a social worker for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gulu, was abducted by the LRA in 1999 but managed to escape during a skirmish between the rebels and the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF).
Charles Uma, the government official in charge of the Gulu District Disaster Management Committee, says the war has displaced his family and led to the deaths of several relatives.
"The abductions have touched every family; everyone is affected," says Dora, a social worker at the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO), who has also lost friends and family to LRA violence.
Reagan Okumu, a Member of Parliament whose Aswa constituency is one of those cut off by LRA activities, says he has lost count of how many members of his family have died as a result of the conflict.
"My sisters, brothers and cousins were first massacred by government soldiers as punishment for supporting UPDA [a now defunct Acholi rebel movement formed in 1986 with the aim of removing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni from power].
"The army went to my village and buried 15 people alive. LRA came later and slaughtered more people in cold blood. I can't tell you how many relatives I have lost," Okumu told IRIN.
Lost generation
Besides the gross violations of human rights, the conflict in northern Uganda has damaged the fabric of Acholi society. With children and youths the main target of LRA abductions, the memories of rebel atrocities will take generations to fade away.
Ex-LRA abductees in northern Uganda.
Credit: ACCORD (2002)
|
Joe Lakony, a trainee social worker at GUSCO, says the LRA's use of Acholi children to commit atrocities has not only caused bitterness in his society, but has sown the seeds of distrust between the younger and older generation.
"What I know is that most of the children we are helping here were abducted. We know they were forced to do a lot of things. Some were ordered to kill their own parents and family members. We have come to understand that they did what they did for their survival," he explains.
Goreti Oyiela, one of the managers at a rehabilitation centre for former abducted children run by World Vision in Gulu, has similar feelings. "Sometimes you don't know what to do. You feel the pain, but then you also know the child was innocent. So you help the child," she says.
The situation is thought to be at its worst in Kitgum and Pader Districts. This is a "society dying by the roots", in the words of Baker Ochola, the retired Catholic Bishop of Kitgum.
Continued?
|
