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53 Karimojong Rounded Up
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New Vision (Kampala)February 3, 2004
Posted to the web February 3, 2004 Nathan Etengu
Kampala
OVER 21 guns were recovered and 53 suspected warriors and their collaborators arrested in an operation by the UPDF in Kangole trading centre, Moroto district on Saturday.The suspects included a nursing assistant, Danela Tuko, who works with the Catholic Church-run health centre.
Tuko was reportedly found with a gun and 30 bullets hidden in her food barn.Suspects included teachers and traders found with guns and uniforms abandoned by some of the Karimojong LDUs.
The commandant of the Anti-stock Theft Unit (ASTU), Lt. Col. John Baptist Mulindwa and the training and operations officer, Major Emmy Rwashandi, said some suspects were smoked out of roof ceilings where they had hidden with the guns.
"We also recovered pieces of a broken gun from the home of the MP for Bokora county, Patrick Apuun, Mulindwa said.He said Apuun's hunting gun was handed back to his wife."To our utter surprise, the same woman later rang the BBC claiming the army had raped women during the operation," Rwashandi said.Mulindwa said the two-day operation was prompted by an incident in which armed warriors attacked the UPDF X-Ray battalion near Kangole trading centre.
He said five warriors and three Karimojong LDUs were killed during the three-hour fight near the battalion headquarters."The dead LDUs had been asked by some local leaders to desert and join their kinsmen to fight us," Mulindwa said.Many people abandoned the town for fear of being arrested.He said the district security committee had earlier resolved to disarm any Karimojong found loitering with guns on the highway."
The decision follows incidents in which district officials were killed in ambushes on the Moroto-Kangole road," Mulindwa said.He said an ambulance was also ambushed on the same road but the district leaders did not condemn the incidents."Instead, they mobilised the warriors to attack the barracks," Mulindwa said.
The LC5 chairman, Terence Achia, blamed the UPDF for the abrupt operation. He said the RDC should have consulted the local leaders, who would have informed the public that the disarmament exercise had resumed.Achia said the way the army apprehended the warriors angered the residents into attacking the barracks.
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
