Kampala (dpa) – Shortly after sunset, a group of Ugandan children gathered around a fire in Kalongo village to hear tales from their elders. The traditional storytime ritual was suddenly interrupted by a heavily armed man who demanded to know why they were not in bed. Peter Oloya, now 25 and a university student, remembers that night in 1998 vividly. “He was a rebel fighter and all the people scattered and ran into the bushes. I ran into the house. I was about to be abducted, because on that day they abducted and killed very many people,” Oloya told dpa. The kidnappings, killings, rape and torture are fresh in the minds of people in northern Uganda's Acholi region. They bore the brunt of more than two decades of a brutal rebellion waged by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and its leader Joseph Kony. Children in particular were picked up by the LRA and forced to fight, if they were boys. Girls were given as trophies to militiamen. Kony's name alone still arouses fear among many in Acholi, more than seven years after he was pushed out of the country by the Ugandan military. Now a US-based group, Invisible Children, is waging an online campaign to rally the world to capture Kony. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on 33 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Stop Kony campaign comes in the wake of US President Barack Obama's announcement in October 2011 that he was sending 100 special force soldiers to help the Ugandan army go beyond its own borders to fight the radical LRA in neighboring countries. Oloya, who was nearly abducted, believes that Uganda cannot defeat the LRA without international intervention. “The move by the Invisible Children group and the US government is highly welcome. The campaign is very good,” he says. “Ugandan soldiers have no heart to fight the LRA because they gained from the war. The war against Kony should be waged by foreigners because they are neutral,” says Oloya. The LRA has been reduced to only several hundred fighters. They are on the run in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the southern part of the Central African Republic (CAR). Both states suffer from poor governance and the rule of law is weak. Wherever the LRA fighters go, they have kept up their scorched earth policy – looting, pillaging and burning villages to the ground, while either killing or abducting civilians. Kony's movement – which repeatedly refused to negotiate a peace deal – adheres to a messianic ideology, telling followers the LRA will one day rule Uganda with the biblical Ten Commandments. A few years into the war against Kampala, in the late 1980s, Kony's fighters smeared “holy oil” on their bodies to repel bullets from the government army. The oil did not work and the rebels turned their wrath on civilians, in a prolonged campaign against the innocent. But some religious leaders in Uganda's north are tired of the violence and are advocating against the use of force to eliminate the LRA. The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI) is upset with the new internet campaign, fearing a further militarization of the conflict. “We have all along said that only peace talks can end that war. We cannot solve this problem by eliminating one another,” said ARLPI leader, Archbishop John Baptist Odama. “As for that Invisible Children group, they are campaigning for the war to kill Kony or capture him, but it will result in the killing of the innocent children abducted by the rebels,” according to Odama. “The campaign for war involves fear and revenge and it will lead to nowhere. We have been and are still campaigning against violence,” the archbishop says. The Ugandan government has been open to Western help in fighting the rebels. Government spokesman Fred Opolot said that any foreign efforts to capture Kony are to be praised. “Our army is fighting the LRA in the CAR and is joined by the US army officers and what we ultimately need is the end of Kony,” Opolot told dpa. “We do not know much about this group except that it is campaigning for the plight of the abducted children and the end of the rebel leader. The campaign is welcome,” he added. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/S4DRi Tags: Campaign, Kony, Uganda Section: East Africa, Features, Human Rights, Latest News
