I am convinced amnesty is a grand deception Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:20:51 +0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
I am convinced amnesty is a grand deception By Okot Nyormoi Jan 6, 2004 In December 1999, Parliament passed a bill giving amnesty to rebel fighters. For some reason, the amnesty is considered in some circles as a success. For example, in December last year it was reported in The Monitor that the amnesty has helped up to 10,000 rebels. However, I have always said amnesty as a mechanism to restore law and order in the north would not work. This is so for both conceptual and technical reasons. To understand the conceptual reason, let me introduce an Acholi expression cwer cwiny, which literally means the bleeding of the heart. When a person says he has cwer cwiny, the normal response is to listen to the reasons why and to see what can be done to eliminate the cause. If an Acholi says that cwinye cwer (his or her heart is bleeding), it is really a way of seeking a dialogue about whatever is making the heart bleed. The correct response is to at least listen, not to ignore, insult, assault or expect the person to ask for forgiveness. In the late ‘60s and the ‘70s, many Acholis joined the armed forces to serve the state. They were caught in the power struggle between the central government and the Kabaka of Buganda and later on between Obote 1 and Idi Amin govenments. Because their role was to suppress forces that challenged the state power, the whole Acholi community was unjustifiably blamed, particularly in Buganda, instead of the state that employed them. To win support, Amin seized on the sentiment to eliminate many Acholi servicemen. Since the ‘80s, Acholi servicemen continued to accumulate cwer cwiny. First, during the war with the NRA rebels, Acholi servicemen who bore the brunt of the war grew weary. Instead of listening to the cwer cwiny about the mounting death toll, the regime responded by recruiting more young men from Acholi and sending them off to fight in Luwero. Since new recruits were inexperienced, many of them came back in coffins. Since the cwer cwiny was not handled properly, the 1985 coup was the result. After the coup, the Okello Junta regime negotiated a peace agreement with the NRM. Unfortunately, the leader of the NRM termed the agreement a peace joke because he had no intention of honouring it. After the NRM takeover, again the Acholi servicemens cwer cwiny was not handled properly. What could have been a beautiful opportunity to create peace through dialogue, as an appropriate response would have been, turned into another war. Conceptually, amnesty is a process by which citizens who have committed crimes against the state are forgiven by the state. The state in this case would derive its moral authority from the fact that those who run it have themselves not committed any crimes against the state. Whereas in the early stages, the NRM regime presented itself as a liberator from dictatorship, it has long since abandoned that pretense. It is corrupt, intolerant of critics, has committed atrocities both within and outside Uganda, is known to torture detainees in the so-called safe houses and manipulating the constitution to deprive citizens the right to organise politically. The NRM regime does not have the moral or political authority to grant amnesty. Amnesty is also usually given to a defeated force by the victorious force. In this case, there has been a stalemate. Instead, it is the innocent people of Acholi who are the big losers. In fact, the 10,000 people reported recently to have benefited from the amnesty, only about 3,000 of them hail from the north, and most of those people are victims of abduction. To give them amnesty is to unjustly criminalise them. That simply adds to the cwer cwiny which they already have plenty of stemming from their abduction experience. Amnesty favors the winning side in a conflict irrespective of whether it is right or wrong or whether the losing side has legitimate complaints or not. Consequently, peace via amnesty is not a principled peace. It sidesteps the truth. Painful as it may be, the truth must be brought out and responsibilities must be assigned and accepted. Amnesty is also based on the assumption of a) guilt by rebels, b) an all-merciful government and c) both sides abiding by the spirit of the declaration and acceptance of amnesty. Almost none of these assumptions are valid. There is no question that the rebels have committed plenty of atrocities but so has the government. There is no reason to believe that if rebels accept the amnesty they would be safe since the President continuously threatens to kill the rebel leaders. There is also no evidence at the moment that both sides in the conflict have a mechanism in place to ensure that the conditions under which the amnesty is given are strictly enforced. Therefore, giving amnesty or accepting it without carefully, seriously and honestly negotiating these terms is like putting the cart before the horse. As part of the carrot and stick approach, this amnesty programme was designed to isolate the leadership of the rebels by encouraging defection by the rank and file. As it also turned out, those who defected met with disappointment because some of them jumped from one bad situation only to be recruited into UPDF and sent off to fight either the rebels they had just escaped from or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the amnesty has failed to meet the people’s expectation for peace, it has been a very useful propaganda tool for the regime as a substitute for any real effort to engage in a peaceful resolution of the war. In the meantime, former abductees who do not need amnesty in the first place are being paraded as examples of a resounding success of the amnesty. The track record of the Movement regime on peace negotiation is littered with betrayals beginning with the Nairobi Peace agreement that Museveni later called a peace joke to the embarrassment of Mr Daniel arap Moi, then President of Kenya. Another example was the 1996 peace negotiation in which the government was led by the then Minister Betty Bigombe. It is time that this amnesty be recognised as nothing but grand deception. Its death may force people to demand for a negotiated settlement of the conflict more vigorously than it has been possible under the illusion of the amnesty program. Mr Nyormoi is a Ugandan resident in Houston, Texas (USA) [EMAIL PROTECTED] © 2003 The Monitor Publications Mitayo Potosi _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. 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