RE: [Ugnet] NEWS: Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive
SORROWFUL, PRIMITIVE, BACKWARDS, EXCOMMUNICATED, ILLEGITIMATE, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, ILLEGAL .(what more do we have?)!!! Now WHO EVER HAS WRONGED UGANDAN can sleep fine. This unusually primitive, unusually unorthodox, unusually paradoxical mode of HOME MADE DEMOCRACY, HOME MADE JUSTICE HOME MADE CONFLICT RESOLUTION legitimizes all the WRONGS of the NRA/M that they claim they are striving to eradicate. You can fool my people They dont say no Well you can fool my people very well Come on and fool my people very They dont say no You can fool my people that black is white They never say no Come on and fool my people very well They never say no You can fool my people say you are bringing religion They never say no Tell my people that Night is Day They never say no Please come on and fool my people very well They never say no Tell my people that wrong is right They never say no An extract from the chorus of a song on the making. Sawa mbaya, ngeda ku comingga backu imorgon!!! Nocla gaumoy --- On Tue 04/19, musamize [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: musamize [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: ugandanet@kym.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:32:51 -0700 (PDT)Subject: [Ugnet] NEWS: Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive April 18, 2005 Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to ForgiveBy MARC LACEY ULU, Uganda - The International Criminal Court at The Hague represents one way of holding those who commit atrocities responsible for their crimes. The raw eggs, twigs and livestock that the Acholi people of northern Uganda use in their traditional reconciliation ceremonies represent another. The two very different systems - one based on Western notions of justice, the other on a deep African tradition of forgiveness - are clashing in their response to one of this continent's most bizarre and brutal guerrilla wars, a conflict that has raged for 18 years in the rugged terrain along Uganda's border with Sudan. The fighting features rebels who call themselves the Lord's Resistance Army and who speak earnestly of the import of the Ten Commandments, but who routinely hack up civilians who get in their way. To add to their numbers, the rebels abduct children in the night, brainwash them in the bush, indoctrinate them by forcing them to kill, and then turn them - 20,000 over the last two decades - into the next wave of ferocious fighters seeking to topple the government. Girls as young as 12 are assigned as rebel commanders' wives. Anyone who does not toe the line is brutally killed. The international court, invited to investigate the war by President Yoweri Museveni, has announced it is close to issuing arrest warrants for rebel leaders including, no doubt, Joseph Kony, the self-styled spiritualist calling the shots. But some war victims are urging the international court to back off. They say the local people will suffer if the rebel command feels cornered. They recommend giving forgiveness more of a chance, using an age-old ceremony involving raw eggs. "When we talk of arrest warrants it sounds so simple," said David Onen Acana II, the chief of the Acholi, the dominant tribe in the war-riven north, who traveled to The Hague recently to make his objections known. "But an arrest warrant doesn't mean the war will end." Lars Erik Skaansar, the top United Nations official in Gulu, has sought peace in as varied places as the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Middle East over the last 12 years. "I have never seen such a capacity to forgive," he said. Mr. Kony tells his followers that he is in direct contact with God, and that God says it is right to kill in the cause of toppling Mr. Museveni's evil government, which is accused of hostility toward the country's north. (The government's sins, however, remain unstated.) In 1988, when the government tried to train villagers in self-defense, Mr. Kony was quoted as saying: "If you pick up an arrow against us and we ended up cutting off the hand you used, who is to blame? You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips. Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if your hand, eye or mouth is at fault, it should be cut off." The rebels began cutting off the lips, hands, noses and breasts of civilians, intending that their victims survive as constant warnings to others. The other day, an assembly of Acholi chiefs put the notion of forgiveness into action. As they looked on, 28 young men and women who had recently defected from the rebels lined up according to rank on a hilltop overlooking this war-scared regional capital, with a one-legged lieutenant colonel in the lead and some adolescent privates bringing up the rear. They had killed and maimed together. They had raped and pillaged. One after the other, they stuck their bare right feet in a freshly cracked egg, with the lieutenant colonel, who lost his right leg to a bomb, inserting his right crutch in the egg i
[Ugnet] NEWS: Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive
April 18, 2005 Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to ForgiveBy MARC LACEY ULU, Uganda - The International Criminal Court at The Hague represents one way of holding those who commit atrocities responsible for their crimes. The raw eggs, twigs and livestock that the Acholi people of northern Uganda use in their traditional reconciliation ceremonies represent another. The two very different systems - one based on Western notions of justice, the other on a deep African tradition of forgiveness - are clashing in their response to one of this continent's most bizarre and brutal guerrilla wars, a conflict that has raged for 18 years in the rugged terrain along Uganda's border with Sudan. The fighting features rebels who call themselves the Lord's Resistance Army and who speak earnestly of the import of the Ten Commandments, but who routinely hack up civilians who get in their way. To add to their numbers, the rebels abduct children in the night, brainwash them in the bush, indoctrinate them by forcing them to kill, and then turn them - 20,000 over the last two decades - into the next wave of ferocious fighters seeking to topple the government. Girls as young as 12 are assigned as rebel commanders' wives. Anyone who does not toe the line is brutally killed. The international court, invited to investigate the war by President Yoweri Museveni, has announced it is close to issuing arrest warrants for rebel leaders including, no doubt, Joseph Kony, the self-styled spiritualist calling the shots. But some war victims are urging the international court to back off. They say the local people will suffer if the rebel command feels cornered. They recommend giving forgiveness more of a chance, using an age-old ceremony involving raw eggs. "When we talk of arrest warrants it sounds so simple," said David Onen Acana II, the chief of the Acholi, the dominant tribe in the war-riven north, who traveled to The Hague recently to make his objections known. "But an arrest warrant doesn't mean the war will end." Lars Erik Skaansar, the top United Nations official in Gulu, has sought peace in as varied places as the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Middle East over the last 12 years. "I have never seen such a capacity to forgive," he said. Mr. Kony tells his followers that he is in direct contact with God, and that God says it is right to kill in the cause of toppling Mr. Museveni's evil government, which is accused of hostility toward the country's north. (The government's sins, however, remain unstated.) In 1988, when the government tried to train villagers in self-defense, Mr. Kony was quoted as saying: "If you pick up an arrow against us and we ended up cutting off the hand you used, who is to blame? You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips. Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if your hand, eye or mouth is at fault, it should be cut off." The rebels began cutting off the lips, hands, noses and breasts of civilians, intending that their victims survive as constant warnings to others. The other day, an assembly of Acholi chiefs put the notion of forgiveness into action. As they looked on, 28 young men and women who had recently defected from the rebels lined up according to rank on a hilltop overlooking this war-scared regional capital, with a one-legged lieutenant colonel in the lead and some adolescent privates bringing up the rear. They had killed and maimed together. They had raped and pillaged. One after the other, they stuck their bare right feet in a freshly cracked egg, with the lieutenant colonel, who lost his right leg to a bomb, inserting his right crutch in the egg instead. The egg symbolizes innocent life, according to local custom, and by dabbing themselves in it the killers are restoring themselves to the way they used to be. Next, the former fighters brushed against the branch of a pobo tree, which symbolically cleansed them. By stepping over a pole, they were welcomed back into the community by Mr. Acana and the other chiefs. "I ask for your forgiveness," said Charles Otim, 34, the rebel lieutenant colonel, who had been abducted by the rebels himself, at the age of 16, early in the war. "We have wronged you." The age-old rite is what local residents have used when members of one tribe kill members of another. After being welcomed back into the fold, the offender must sit down together with tribal leaders and make amends. After confessing to his misdeeds, the wayward tribesman is required to pay the victim's kin compensation in the form of cows, goats and sheep. It is a system not unlike those in use in other parts of Africa. Somalis still pay compensation to quell the inter-clan battles in that country, although the traditional rite cannot possibly keep up with all the killings. In northern Kenya, where a recent bout of clan violence resulted in several dozen deaths, tribal mediation became bogged down over complains that the loss of a man's life was compensated
