---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "John Ashworth" <[email protected]> Date: 6 Dec 2016 10:37 Subject: [sudans-john-ashworth] Are child soldiers accountable when they become men? To: "Group" <[email protected]> Cc:
1. Kony’s killers – are child soldiers accountable when they become men? IRIN 06/12/2016 The trial of Dominic Ongwen, a senior member of the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, opens on Tuesday before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Many horrors will be recounted, but the case also throws up deep ethical questions: is a child, brutalised and turned into a killer, fully responsible for his or her actions? If the abuses of government forces aren’t also being investigated, at what point does it become victor’s justice? Abducted by the LRA at the age of 10, Ongwen became a protégé of rebel leader Joseph Kony and was forced to witness and carry out acts of extreme violence. He will be appearing before Trial Chamber IX to answer 70 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. They include allegations of murder, rape, sexual slavery, torture, pillaging, and the conscription of children aged under 15 for combat. It is the first time in the history of the ICC where the alleged perpetrator himself was a child soldier. “I know it’s a delicate balance. It’s about accountability. It’s about whether Ongwen was responsible for the atrocities or not,” Herman von Hebel, the ICC registrar, told reporters on Monday in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Sympathy In northern Uganda, epicentre of the two-decade-long insurgency, Ongwen is not uniformly thought of as a monster. Among many former LRA child soldiers, now back in their communities after amnesty and reconciliation programmes, there is sympathy. Like Ongwen, they were forced to commit serious crimes, and some fault the government for not having protected them. “He is a victim and not an abuser,” Thomas Otim, a former LRA combatant, told IRIN. “Ongwen, like many of us, had to obey and execute Kony’s orders. If he didn’t, he could have been killed…. He should be forgiven and pardoned.” Even some LRA victims agree with Otim. Sarah Angee lost her parents and relatives in an LRA attack in her northern home district of Amuru. “As a victim and survivor, I have accepted to forgive Ongwen for the atrocities and suffering he caused,” she told IRIN. “As a child soldier, he was conscripted and indoctrinated to kill, maim, rape women, mutilate, attack camps, abduct children, and other horrible atrocities.” The LRA terrorised northern Uganda between 1987 and 2006. It emerged in the tumult of a divided Uganda, in which President Yoweri Museveni’s southern-based National Resistance Movement had fought its way to Kampala and overthrown the short-lived military rule of Tito Okello, an Acholi. Although the LRA was an Acholi-based movement, its victims were overwhelmingly from its own community. In 2000, the government introduced a blanket amnesty for anyone who abandoned the group and renounced involvement in the war. Close to 30,000 took up the offer, but the government subsequently excluded the most senior commanders like Ongwen. He is the only one of five indicted LRA figures to have surrendered, giving himself up in Central African Republic in January 2015. With the exception of Kony, the other three wanted men are believed to be dead. Rather than the ICC’s retributive justice, Angee would like to see Ongwen pardoned and, like many of the ex-LRA who returned home, enrolled in a traditional Acholi reconciliation process known as Mato Oput. “Let the ICC leave him to come back home and be given amnesty like other top LRA commanders. He will be cleansed and reconciled with the relatives and communities that he wronged and offended during the conflict through [our] local mechanism,” she said. Meeting Ongwen But Betty Oyell Bigombe, a senior director at the World Bank who – as a state minister for northern Uganda – worked for years to broker an end to the conflict, disagrees with the notion of pardoning Ongwen. “I met Ongwen during the peace talks. He was the most hostile. I was very scared of him,” she told IRIN. “Ongwen can’t be left to get off scot-free. It’s true, Ongwen was abducted. It’s true, he was a victim. But, like so many others, he had an opportunity to defect. But he didn’t surrender for all those years. This raises a moral question. Why didn’t he? “I am a stronger believer in forgiveness. But forgiveness has to have a limit. Forgiveness has to have reasons. Victims never really recover if justice is never there. It wouldn’t be good to see Ongwen in a suit driving a car and [the victims] have nothing,” she said. “Whatever comes out of it [the trial] can be discussed,” she added. “[But] I also think this is important for the existence of the ICC. The ICC was created to protect the voiceless. It acts as deterrence so that any other person who has those intentions in future should know the consequences.” Why mixed feelings? Phil Clark, a Great Lakes expert at SOAS, University of London, believes victims' feelings toward Ongwen are mixed, and filtered through their own experiences. “Many victims I have interviewed say they have children just like Ongwen – children who were abducted but who committed horrific atrocities, including back in their home communities. These victims therefore hate the crimes Ongwen has committed, but are sympathetic to him because of the way he was forced into the rebel ranks,” he told IRIN. Lino Owora Ogora, a transitional justice and peace-building activist based in the main northern city of Gulu, agrees with Clark over the tangled emotions stirred by the case. “The sentiments of victims towards forgiveness can also be explained by the fact that for a long time amnesty was promoted and embraced by the people as a means of ending the conflict,” he noted. “Because many commanders who surrendered before Ongwen were granted amnesty, the people feel he also deserves amnesty.” “Yes, I think the government politicised and manipulated the ICC in the war against the LRA. The government used the ICC to isolate the LRA from the international community and to officially label the LRA a terrorist organisation,” said Ogora. “How else can you explain the fact that today the same government that invited in the ICC in the first place is the same government that has turned into a bitter critic of the ICC, with President Museveni openly calling the ICC a 'bunch of useless people'?” But Clark also faults the ICC. “As part of the pre-referral negotiations, the ICC prosecutor promised the government there would be no investigations of state actors as long as the government cooperated with the court. The Ugandan government was only too willing to cooperate. This meant the ICC would target the government's opponents such as the LRA while protecting the state from the threat of prosecution,” he said. “In the eyes of affected communities in northern Uganda, this immediately delegitimises the ICC,” Clark suggested. “Local communities view both the LRA and the government as responsible for the atrocities they have suffered. Some communities even see government crimes as worse because the state – unlike rebels – is supposed to guarantee citizens' protection and security.” Government crimes Ongwen’s call to the dock on Tuesday has prompted fresh calls for investigations into alleged crimes committed by the army, the Ugandan People’s Defence Force, during the long counter-insurgency war in the north, in which human rights violations were committed. “We need a full accounting for the atrocities, where both parties involved in the conflict have to account. The absence of accountability from the UPDF side will always remain an issue if not addressed,” said Joyce Freda Apio, a transitional justice expert. “The heavy reliance by the Office of the Prosecutor on evidence gathered by Ugandan military intelligence raises concern if what is being pursued is the victor's justice,” she told IRIN. Clark said that by ignoring government atrocities “for the sake of expediency”, the ICC had destroyed its reputation among the local communities. “They see the court and the government as one and the same – and blame the court for protecting and even emboldening the state to continue committing crimes. For example, its violent crackdown against civilians in the three national elections held since the ICC intervened in Uganda.” But Bigombe, the World Bank director and former state minister, sees that as disingenuous. “There have been complaints, but no organisation has communicated to [the] ICC and said, ‘Could you investigate UPDF as well?’ The ICC as an institution will not deal with outcries and rumours. If there was a letter or invitation to invite ICC to investigate the UPDF for their role in northern Uganda, I would be surprised if ICC turned their back.” The Ugandan government referred the LRA case to the ICC in 2004 – alleged UPDF atrocities were not in the terms of reference. However, the government argues that it has always investigated allegations against its soldiers, and those found guilty have been punished harshly. But there was also the government’s controversial strategy to force most of the population of the north into “protected villages”, a policy condemned by rights groups and local politicians. Ongwen will enter a plea of guilty or not guilty to the charges being brought against him on Tuesday. The court will then adjourn to 16 January, when the prosecution will begin presenting its evidence. It’s a case Ugandans will follow with rapt attention. A decade on from leaving Uganda, the LRA now numbers just a few hundred, operating in the remotest regions of the Congo, CAR and Sudan, but the legacy of the group’s violence still casts a long shadow over people’s lives. http://us12.campaign-archive1.com/?u=31c0c755a8105c17c23d89842&id= 1e4dd92646&e=3818f3f39f END1 2. Former LRA child soldier Dominic Ongwen and the quest for justice BBC 06/12/2016 Snatched and inducted into a life of extreme violence while still a child, Dominic Ongwen now finds himself in another place not of his own choosing - the dock of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Author Ledio Cakaj looks back at Ongwen's life. The former Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) fighter is the first former child soldier to face charges at the ICC. Nicknamed the "White Ant", he became one of the outlawed rebel group's most ruthless commanders before clashing with its leader Joseph Kony. He has been charged with 70 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including attacks against civilians, torture, sexual and gender-based crimes and conscription and use of child soldiers - some of them the very crimes he was a victim of all those years ago. Mr Ongwen's lawyers have argued that he should be regarded as a child soldier and thus found not guilty. They argue that throughout his time in the LRA he was under duress, even after he turned 18, the age of criminal responsibility at the ICC. 'Kadogo' experiences The LRA's secretive nature and the conflict's long duration - nearly three decades - make the facts of Mr Ongwen's life hard to verify. There is little doubt LRA rebels abducted Mr Ongwen near his family's home in northern Uganda. It is less clear when exactly when that happened - probably in the late 1980s or early 1990s - or how old he was - somewhere nine and 14 years old. Once in the LRA, Mr Ongwen's life and choices become even harder to establish. In his early days with the rebels, he is believed to have been assigned to the households of top commanders including LRA founder and leader Kony. As a "youngus" (young one) or "kadogo" (small), he would have helped prepare food and carry commanders' belongings. If the experiences of other former LRA members are any guide, Mr Ongwen would have been forced to participate in the killing or beating of other abductees who might have attempted to escape - a common strategy to discourage people from leaving the ranks. Human rights groups have documented this as a tactic used to brainwash child fighters for years. Kony distributed the kadogo, who often ended up as bodyguards to the same commanders they served as young children. Female abductees, known as "ting ting", were young prepubescent girls who cared for commanders' children and helped their so-called wives. Upon reaching puberty, the ting ting became "lamegu", or wives to commanders, and were almost exclusively distributed on Kony's orders. Punishment and escape For the young fighters, close proximity to Kony often meant military rank. Rank came with command responsibilities as well as personal bodyguards and wives, sought-after privileges that increased the chance of survival in the punishing environments LRA groups lived in. Over the years, former LRA members have referred to Mr Ongwen as major, colonel, brigadier and most recently as a simple private, indicating that at some point he had ultimately been shunned by Kony, who uses rank and other methods to exercise almost complete control over his fighters. Okot George "Odek", a former combatant who escaped after Mr Ongwen, claimed that Kony ordered a severe beating for Mr Ongwen at the end of 2014 for insubordination. In bad shape and with the help of another fighter Mr Ongwen escaped from Kony's camp in Sudan's Southern Darfur region, making it to neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR). He was caught by CAR rebels and handed over to American Special Forces in CAR - part of an African Union (AU) mission to deal with the LRA. Should he be on trial? In northern Uganda, reactions to Mr Ongwen's pending trial have been mixed. Some, including people formerly in the LRA, say he is also a victim. Florence Ayot, one of Mr Ongwen's former wives told the BBC in 2008: "Dominic used to tell us he was abducted when he was very young. Everything he did was in the name of Kony, so he's innocent." Others say he should be held responsible for his actions. "Ongwen being the rebel commander must have participated in the planning meetings to attack and abduct people… therefore he must be held responsible for all the atrocities committed including murder and loss of property," a local official told theDaily Monitor in January. Various people have also pointed to the lack of accountability for crimes against civilians carried out by fighters of the National Resistance Army (NRA) - the rebel group led by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, who stormed to power in 1986. "In Uganda, while many condemn the LRA and the crimes committed, missing is the role of government which many in the north would have wanted to see interrogated - and investigated," wrote journalist Rosebell Kagumire. The LRA and other short-lived predecessor rebellions in northern Uganda arose in part as a response to NRA atrocities, documented by local NGOs such as theJustice and Reconciliation Project. Above all, many hope that the ICC will award reparations to the victims of the conflict. Disbursing any funds would be a long and complicated process but for the victims it may be "the only sign of a successful trial", Lino Owor Ogora from the NGOFoundation For Justice and Development Initiatives says. Ledio Cakaj wrote When the Walking Defeats You, One Man's Journey as Joseph Kony's Bodyguard http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38207086 END2 ______________________ John Ashworth [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +211 919 695 362 (South Sudan mobile) +44 787 976 8030 (UK mobile) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) Skype: jashworth1 PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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