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[c] The UPDF administration of the concentration
camps The concentration camps administration strategy is a total war against the
Acholi society because of the following strategies:
[i] Proliferation of sodomy: The HIV/AIDS infected UPDF soldiers sodomize families with the view to infecting them with the disease and also humiliating them. The Gersony report points out that the UPDF battalion based in Gulu was nicknamed by the population "langungu-gungu" (meaning to sodomize). Sodomizing the Acholi population became part of the UPDF rite of passage, where a soldier was not considered a true man and was mocked to "go home and rear children" if he does not sodomize the Acholi concentration camp residents. The UPDF sodomy patrols armed with assault rifles and HIV/AIDS roam the camps at night stoking for families. A UPDF officer explains how difficult it was to resist the temptation of joining the mobile sodomy patrol units. He said, "when UPDF soldiers sodomize the Acholi population, they would return to barracks shouting, 'we are real men, we are real men, we have been into camps on patrol and sodomized the Acholi people. We are men, real men, now!' Hardcore UPDF warriordom respect was won by severally sodomizing the same household members. A UPDF Captain boasted, "the soldiers have no taste for moral rectitude because renown and manhood is easier won in moral debauchery and depravities. These young warriors are eager to earn a badge of manhood and hardcore warriorhood against the Acholi population. This is war." To the extent that the UPDF soldiers see themselves as earning a badge of honor and warriordom respect, they do not impute criminality to it. But we must impute the genocide intention to the UPDF political and military elite who planned, concealed and promoted the concentration camps as sexual commons. Thus, sodomy was not simply an aberrant behaviour that the UPDF HIV/AIDS infected soldiers engaged in, it is an official policy that served to define rite of passage, manhood and warriordom respect to the UPDF officers and men. [ii] Enforced Starvation: Crops that concentration camp residents planted
have been destroyed on the excuse of providing food to rebels. Many women who
risked going out to forage for food for their starving and malnourished children
were shot and killed by the UPDF soldiers.
[iii] Rejecting and Frustrating Humanitarian Assistance that can ameliorate mass deaths. General Museveni's Cabinet Ministers refused any international humanitarian assistance to ameliorate the dire humanitarian situations. This has turned the concentration camps into infamous sites of mass murders. The World Health Organization (WHO) and NGOs reports document over 1,000 people die every week, that is, over 50,000 deaths per year. The mortality rate is three times that of Darfur in the Sudan. The violent death rate, according to Oxfam and Uganda civil society groups, is 146 deaths per day and this is several times higher than that of Iraq, a country actively at war with the United States of America. Yet, in a discussion with Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) on April 4, 2006, General Museveni dismissed the daily death figures, of over 146 per day or 1,000 per week, as not worth highlighting. General Museveni also opposed the suggestion of a UN intervention force to provide humanitarian assistance and security to the Acholi genocide victims arguing that there is enough security in the concentration camps. We must be clear that the policy of rejecting humanitarian assistance by General Museveni and associates is a ploy to continue perpetrating mass murder in the concentration camps. This policy must be exposed for what it is, - a genocide policy. [d] The response of the media:
Complicity and concealment of genocide. In the
uncritical and non-investigative reporting of numerous attacks, there was
prevalence of ambiguous and deceptive phrases, which actively promoted and
concealed genocide. Some of the mischaracterization of war against civilians
included the following:
[i] Use of ambiguous and deceptive phrases: [a] War against non-combatant civilian Acholi population was reported as "Pacifying the North" [b] Murderous artillery bombardments and helicopter strafing as "moving people into camps for their protection" [c] Poisoning civilian water wells as "denying the rebels drinking water" [d] Emphasizing vacillating perspectives on the attacks on unarmed civilian Acholi population. At times, it reported it as a war against the LRA, or against the Sudan, or against terrorists instead of the Acholi population being attacked by the UPDF. [e] Killing abducted children as "killing rebels"; when the abducted children escape from LRA captivity, they are reported as "rescued abductees." [ii] Misrepresenting the frame of reference in the war Occasional accurate reporting of civilian bombardments is interspersed with blaming the LRA as responsible for creating the camps. This is then followed with a more focused rendition of alleged LRA rule by 10 commandments and other alleged lurid and perverted details of vile atrocities, suggesting that the UPDF atrocities against the Acholi people are less severe, and therefore, acceptable. On the many occasions when Museveni scuttled the almost successful peace negotiation between Betty Bigombe, a government appointed peace negotiator with the LRA peace team, the media often misreported that the LRA are disinterested in peace talks. They would then make a case for war, which is the cover for the genocide against the Acholi population. 5. THE RESPONSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO THE PLEA OF ACHOLI GENOCIDE VICTIMS: CHIDED AND INDIFFERENCE! The international community have chided and reacted with indifference to the plea of Acholi people for a genuine and unconditional negotiated peace. The Acholi population based their plea on precedents from the International Community's resolution of conflicts in Mozambique, where RENAMO committed serious atrocities against the civilian population; Sierra Leone, where Foday Sanko's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) committed unspeakable atrocities against the Sierra Leonean people and South Africa, where the apartheid regime committed horrible crimes against humanity. For the sake of peace, civil co-existence and continuation of a sense of nationhood, a genuine unconditional negotiated peace and amnesty was enforced. The international community, against the background
of other cases in Africa, points out that there must be no wanton impunity to
perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide. Nonetheless, they are
silent on numerous documented crimes of genocide being committed by the UPDF in
the concentration camps. They have also refused to label the "worse and most
forgotten humanitarian catastrophe in the world" festering under the "worse form
of terrorism" as described by Jan Egeland, genocide. To salvage the surviving
genocide victim population, the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative
(ARLPI), a non-partisan ecumenical coalition of the religious faiths, traveled
to the capitals of western countries seeking a peaceful resolution to the war
but their efforts have been ignored. Instead, the international community has
joined factions of the genocide forces by training and equipping the UPDF in
lethal war-fighting tactics, thus, continuing the perpetration of genocide
against the Acholi population. The indifference shown by the international
community by throttling fast-forward with militarism, equipping and training the
UPDF, providing psychological warfare expertise for concealing and perpetrating
genocide against the Acholi population is unparallel in the twenty first
century. It is mockery of the international community's dictum of "NEVER AGAIN,"
will genocide occur under our watch. For this dictum to garner hope for our
collective humanity, it must be openly and dispassionately
enforced.
The conclusion follows |
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