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Cameroon Tribune (Yaound�)February 24, 2004
Posted to the web February 24, 2004
Peter Efande
Violence is nothing new to the people of northern Uganda, but the latest massacre is horrifying.Rebel activities in northern Uganda are increasingly becoming despicable.Last Saturday, more than 190 are reported killed in the attack at a camp for displaced persons near the northern town of Lira. According to the BBC, Uganda's defence minister says the rebels behind the attack will be repaid in the way.
Amama Mbabazi says the army is pursuing the rebels, believed to be members of the Lord's Resistance Army.
For almost two decades the authorities have been fighting the LRA, which is known for its brutality.The attack on Barlonya camp, about 26km (16 miles) north of Lira town, apparently took place on Saturday afternoon.The BBC quotes a legislator, Charles Anjiro explaining that as the insurgents surrounded the camp, many people ran to their grass huts and were burnt. "It's a hopeless situation, we went there this morning with the Lira district police commander and physically counted 192 bodies.
The scene is terrible," he said.Fifty-six people were taken to the hospital with burns, shrapnel and gunshot wounds, one of whom died on Sunday, said Dr Jane Aceng, head of Lira hospital. Around 5,000 people, most of whom had fled fighting between the rebels and government troops, were living in the camp. Altogether the conflict is said to have displaced at least one million people.
The camp was being guarded by a local self-defence militia which was outnumbered and outgunned, an army spokesman said. Major Shaban Bantariza said the LRA was trying to scare the militias into giving up their work. "I've never seen in my life such a massacre... I saw in one hut alone a whole family members still burning," a Ugandan priest in Lira told the BBC. The LRA, led by self-proclaimed mystic Joseph Kony, are known for kidnapping and brutalising young children, many of whom end up fighting for them.
The group is based in lawless areas of neighbouring southern Sudan.The Ugandan army says the rebels attack the camps to divert its attention away from hunting the insurgents down in the bush.The Ugandan army said 25 rebels were killed in a different area on Saturday.
However, while the army claims to be weakening the rebels, civilians remain extremely vulnerable, says the BBC's Will Ross, in the capital Kampala.Newly recruited militias have so far been unable to defend the population, he says.
"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
