KAMPALA
– Rebel leader Joseph Kony who started out as a Christian fundamentalist has
since become a Muslim, former abductees have said.
Children formerly abducted by the rebel Lord’s
Resistance Army say that Kony insists on Islamic
conduct in the southern Sudanese camps.
“The prayers are in Islamic because Kony had also become a Muslim. He had been given the name
Mohammad,” said Denis Ochola, 17, who escaped
from rebel captivity last year.
“During prayers we kneel down like Muslims,”
Ochola said in an interview held last year in Gulu.
However, Ochola who hails from
Amida sub county in Kitgum
says there are “some incidents where Kony
believes that there is Jesus, the son of God and he talks directly to
God.”
Ochola says
that most of the commanders don’t like praying in Islam and that it
appears “like Kony is forcing them to become
Muslims.”
Another boy, Sunday, who spent a year in LRA captivity
in Gulu and Kitgum said
that prayers inside Uganda were
held in both Islam and Christianity.
The children say that senior commanders like Vincent Otti
communicate in Arabic, Luo and sometimes broken
English.
Kony, son
to a Catholic catechist, started out 17 years ago with an intention of
establishing national rule based on the Ten Commandments.
In the mid 1990s, the former speaker of the Sudanese
Parliament Hassan Turabi
was regarded as an Islamic expansionist eager to Islamise
the LRA.
According to Mr George Omona, Country Director of Acord,
religious fanaticism fuels the northern insurgency:
“One problem is the spiritual element of the
conflict – a mixture of traditional religion, Islam and Christianity,
which has given the rebel leader a multiple personality,” Omona said. “It becomes difficult to deal with Kony – that kind of rebel leader who is the centre
of everything.”
Read related Story
- Kony,
Museveni fight: Sudan, America cheer
- ‘Doctor’ treks
to Sudan, back with Kony rebels
|