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Friday, February 13, 2004
The threat of abduction posed by the Lord's Resistance Army is causing
Ugandan children in the northern Acholi province to flee each night into
Gulu, 175 miles north of the capital, Kampala, and nearby towns, where it is
more difficult for the rebels to capture them and recruit them into their
ranks, the Washington Post reports.
Called "night commuters," these appoximately 15,000 children leave more than
300 villages each night to flood into cities, which the LRA finds more
difficult to infiltrate, according to the Post.
UNICEF estimates that 30 children on a daily basis were abducted from homes
and boarding schools in Uganda last year. Since 1994, about 34,000
children have been abducted. The abductions greatly increased after a
government-launched offensive took place in March 2002, in which 10,000
soldiers were sent to put down rebel bases.
Girls risk being raped during their nightly commute and are used as sex
slaves when recruited by the LRA, the Post said.
Two fifteen-year-old girls, Susan Oyella and Jennifer Adoch, sang a marching
song, with the lyrics, "There are no more virgins in Gulu. They were all
raped."
Prossy Atimango, a sixteen-year-old girl who escaped her life as a "rebel
wife" in the LRA, said she was raped repeatedly and was coerced into killing
another girl abducted by the LRA.
"I am really ashamed," she said. "I wanted to take my own life."
Her brother, Innocent Opinonya, aged 14, tried to save her from being raped
one night at a bus park in Gulu where two men started to take off her
clothes. The men, he said, were much larger than him, and they eventually
knocked him out.
For the children who don't have to sleep at bus stations, and on the ground,
huddled outside of buildings, there is the Noah's Ark shelter, protected by
barbed wire. There, with supplies and supervision, the children sleep in
tents. Counselors at the shelter give hygiene and health courses, and group
activities are encouraged.
The LRA, active in northern Uganda since 1987, is led by Joseph Kony. Known
to have child wives by the dozens, the self-declared prophet originally drew
on the support of the Acholi people, who felt disfavored in comparison to
the wealthier south, when the British protectorate of Uganda was created.
Kony told the Acholis that he would overthrow President Yoweri Museveni,
only to betray his own people by abducting their children and terrorizing
them.
"It's like living with a broken heart," Bicenytina Akeio, a mother in
Acholi, said. "But I have to let [my children] commute. ... They are safer
in the shelters" (Emily Wax, Washington Post, Feb. 13).
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