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By Peter Okema Otika
Oct 27, 2004
Since 1986 when Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni took
power, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have never
enjoyed peace.
Numerous rebel groups have emerged and “disappeared”
leaving room for new ones to emerge just to continue
fighting to overthrow the government of Museveni which
they believe is oppressive and undemocratic. Along the
way since 1986, hundreds of thousands of the Acholi
people have been killed, maimed or disappeared.
In fact, human rights organizations put the deaths at
as high as 300,000 lives and United Nations Children’s
Cultural Fund, UNICEF estimates that over 25,000
children forcefully abducted by the rebels of the
Lord’s
Resistance Army, LRA have either been killed or
disappeared.
All these have been happening in the open but the UN,
Western media and the world at large preferred to look
the other way. While the Acholi people continued to
suffer under the brutalities of both LRA rebels and
Ugandan government forces, the UN joined the rank of
the ‘group thinkers” who conspired to ignore the
plight of the people and instead, believed the
consummate lies that President Museveni has been
telling them about the situation in northern Uganda.
Museveni has befriended Western nations and especially
Britain and the US whom he has always told lies about
the real human, political and economic situations in
Uganda. He has awlays told the world, everything is
fine in Uganda and even the international media took
his words without questioning.
Last week 21 October 2004 however, the UN finally came
open and admitted that the human situation in northern
Uganda is the “worse human tragedy,” even “worse than
Darfur.” Briefing reporters after addressing the UN
Security Council, Under-Secretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs who also doubles as the UN
Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, admitted the
fact that the situation in northen Uganda has been the
most neglected and yet it is worse than the Darfur
crisis in Sudan.
“Where else in the world have there been 20,000
kidnaped children? Where else in the world have 90 per
cent of the population in large districts been
displaced? Where else in the world do children make up
80 per cent of the terrorist insurgency movement?” Jan
Egeland rhetorically asked reporters.
Egeland who believes there is no military solution to
the war also told reporters that the world should make
“ bigger international investment – in money, in
political engagement, in diplomacy”and in order to
help bring the war and suffering of the people to an
end.
Although the UN has all along been aware of the human
situations in northern Uganda, the UN has for the last
two decades chose a policy of “ignore and neglect”
when it came to northern Uganda.
In fact, it has been hard for the Acholi people of
northern Uganda to believe whether the UN was separate
or whether it was part of Museveni’s government that
has as well chosen to perpetuate a policy that
intentionally ignores the need to bring to an end, the
suffering of the Acholi people.
Because of this neglect, Museveni has grown to think
that the world condones his policy to neglect the war
and suffering of the people as long as he remained in
power. This is why, Museveni’s government immediately
reacted angrily at Egeland’s remark saying the
situation in northern Uganda is normal and nothing
closer to that in Darfur.
This is the kind of attitude that Museveni has always
held when he realizes that information is coming out
about the real situation in the north of Uganda.
It is the same attitude that motivated him to ban
media reporting on the war in the late 1980s and
persecute news reporters who try to report to the
world, the grave human tragedy in northern Uganda.
Both local and international reporters have been
forced to flee the region of northern Uganda after
being assaulted or threatened with jail or death
should they continue to report about the war and
worsening human conditions in the region.
Although the UN admission of the grave human situation
has come long awaited and late, it should be applauded
and used as a signal for action.
The international community and Western nations that
have been the backbones of Museveni’s support should
use the UN declaration as evidence on which they can
put Museveni to task to either bring an end to the
human suffering or be held accountable.
It should be remembered that, hypocrisy and neglect by
the UN and the West helped morale boost the
perpetuation of the genocide in Rwanda as well as the
massacres of over three million innocent civilians by
Ugandan and Rwandan troops in the Democratic Republic
of Congo.
The Acholi have suffered for the last two decades
while the world looked the other way. If the UN and
the international community continue to ignore the
plight of the Acholi people, it will not be a
surprise. But the UN, the West and the international
community should remember that, their practice of
neglect and selective justice is unfair, genocidal and
criminal to mankind.
Peter Okema Otika is the president of the African
Trans-Atlantic Alliance, a Pittsburgh based
organization that works to fight for the rights of
African refugees and immigrants in the USA. Otika may
be contacted online at
http://www.africantransatlantic.org Or via email at
peterotika@hotmail.com
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