Monday, January 27, 2003
Museveni Blesses Lakwena Return
By WAIRAGALA WAKABI
THE EASTAFRICAN
PRESIDENT YOWERI Museveni has given his blessings to a team of Acholi elders and religious leaders that is due to travel to Nairobi to persuade former rebel leader Alice Lakwena to return to Uganda.
Sources in the Office of the President told The EastAfrican that Museveni met the elders just over two weeks ago and gave his approval for their plans to meet with and persuade Lakwena to return from exile in Kenya.
In 2001, Lakwena said she wanted to return home but feared that she would be prosecuted for crimes committed during her campaign against Museveni's government.
Sources said the Acholi leaders had sought assurances from Museveni that no charges would be brought against her. The president had reportedly promised that Lakwena would be treated under the Amnesty Act of 1999 that pardons surrendering former combatants.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which is working to return home former Ugandan rebels currently in Sudan, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, says it will be ready to handle Lakwena's return if she indicates willingness to go home.
Damien Thuriaux, the IMO project manager in Kampala, told The EastAfrican last Friday that Lakwena would be screened like all former combatants if she went to the IOM offices and her return arranged.
Mr Thuriaux said his organisation would spend $425,000 to repatriate some 500 former guerrillas from Kenya and Sudan to Uganda.
The repatriation exercise, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) and the European Union, is expected to provide return and reintegration funding for an initial group of 200 Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels from Kenya and 300 from Sudan.
To date, the organisation has returned 292 people from Sudan to Uganda. Last year, some 300 former Lakwena fighters were repatriated from Kenya but their leader refused to return despite intense Uganda government efforts.
In January 1985, an unknown Acholi woman called Alice Auma claimed a Christian spirit known as Lakwena had possessed her.
In August of the following year, she formed the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces (HSMF), which launched attacks on government forces in November of the same year, initially using remnants of the rebel Uganda Peoples' Democratic Army.
The group, which believed that smearing their bodies with "blessed" fluids made them bulletproof, marched through several districts including Kitgum, Lira, Soroti, Kumi, Mbale and Tororo before being defeated at Jinja in October 1987. Lakwena fled to Kenya where she has since lived as a refugee.
The same spirit that possessed Alice Auma, who has since been called Lakwena, is said to have possessed Joseph Kony, who formed his Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) using remnants of the HSMF.
For three weeks beginning last week, the IOM was working with Ugandan and Kenyan authorities to register former LRA combatants in Nairobi, who are to be repatriated under the Amnesty Act.
The IOM anticipated that the first batch of returnees would be taken to their homes in March this year.
The organisation says most of the ex-combatants are from the northern Acholi region, which has been the arena of the LRA war.
Lakwena has complained about the poor quality of food and other facilities in Daadab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya where she has lived over the past 17 years.
Former combatants and their dependants accepted for repatriation by the Amnesty Commission will return home with IOM officials.
Once in Uganda, they will be handed over to the commission and will be eligible to receive rehabilitation, reinsertion and reintegration support provided by IOM, Unicef World Vision and the Gulu Save the Children non-governmental organisations.
During the first three days of the registration last week, the IOM said it registered 266 former LRA fighters and their dependents, including abducted women and children.
The registration will continue until February 7.
The amnesty commission in May 2000 identified nearly 3,000 former combatants and their dependents currently living in Kenya.
But most have now reportedly returned home unassisted, leaving about 1,000 still in Kenya.
The programme had initial funding for 500 former rebels to return from both Kenya and neighbouring Sudan.
Uganda recently signed a peace deal with the rebel Uganda National Rescue Front (UNRF-II) of Ali Bamuze, under which 2,000 former combatants agreed to lay down their arms.
Under the agreement, the Uganda government will help resettle the former rebels, while 700 will be integrated into the Uganda People's Defence Forces.
The IOM and the Amnesty Commission are planning to repatriate about 350 former fighters of the Allied Democratic Front who are currently in Congo.
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