Atrocities in Uganda Prompt UN to Call On Rebels to Halt Attacks Against Civilians
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UN News Service (New York)
June 11, 2004
Posted to the web June 11, 2004
Deploring the murder of 128 people over the past month in a series of massacres by the
Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda, the top United Nations humanitarian
official today called on the rebel group to stop attacking civilians immediately.
Jan Egeland, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, said each one of the four massacres
since 16 May had occurred inside camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
"These vicious attacks against some of the most vulnerable civilians are appalling,"
Mr. Egeland said, adding that "in many cases, the victims have fled attack after
attack, desperate for safety."
He also called on the Ugandan Government to redouble its efforts to protect civilians
in the north of the country.
In the most recent massacre, a group of about 100 LRA members killed 25 people,
including five children, at an IDP camp at Abok on Tuesday. The rebels kidnapped 26
others and burned at least 600 huts - which contained food stores for the IDPs - in
the camp.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said aid agencies
have since provided some relief for the remaining Abok camp residents.
On 3 June, LRA rebels murdered 23 people at an IDP camp at Kalabong, while 20 others
are assumed to have been abducted.
The most deadly of the recent wave of massacres occurred on 20 May, when the LRA
struck the Lukodi camp, killing 41 people. On 16 May, 39 people were killed during an
attack on a camp at Pagak.
The four massacres are only the latest by the rebel group. In the village of Barlonyo
on 21 February, at least 190 people were hacked with machetes or burned to death at an
IDP camp. There was another attack in the village of Odek on 29 April.
More than 1.6 million people have become internally displaced within northern Uganda
since 2002 as the LRA fights the Ugandan Government. The rebel group wants to impose
the Ten Commandments of the Christian Bible as law in Uganda.
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The LRA has also become notorious for its kidnapping of children to serve either as
its soldiers or as sexual slaves for its commanders. Mr. Egeland said in April that
10,000 children are estimated to have been abducted for these purposes.
As many as 40,000 Ugandan mothers and their children have also become "night
commuters," walking for hours every night to sleep outside hospitals and community
centres because they feel it is unsafe anywhere else.
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