When appearing before a Human Rights Commission the Director of Ugandas National Resistance Army (NRA) School at Entebbe, Commander Kajabago Karushoke, said that Uganda could be categorised into two: People and what he called biological substances. Explaining the categorisation he said, people comprised peasants, farmers, workers, and a small fraction of intellectuals
All others are biological substances who should be eliminated. He went on to add that the NRA aims to eliminate all those who stand in the way of the revolution. The NRA did not consider those opposed to it as human beings
As far as the NRM was concerned ballot boxes were the guns and ballot papers the bullets..
. Elections were useless and unnecessary because the NRM knows what is good for the people (see Standard No. 22776 Nairobi Saturday 15 August 1987).
When Musevenis language against opponents is punctuated by expressions like:
We shall wipe them out (The Standard, Nairobi 15.8.87)
We shall assassinate and use terror . We shall crush them (see The Independent of 20.1.88)
(There was no policy of scorched earth. There has never been such policy. What was there was a policy to destroy food stocks that were assisting the rebels. (See The New Vision 27.6.89),
Speculation about an impending coup was simply empty talk. No one can overthrow a revolutionary government. If anybody tried, he would end up six feet underground.. (Lt. Gen Museveni as reported by Radio Uganda, 28th, October 1989)
Another notorious NRM/A commander, Tinyefunza said, the NRA took few captives, because most of them (enemies) were simply sent to heaven (The Citizen wee ending 22nd May 1991).
When President Lt. Gen. Museveni, Commander-in-Chief of NRA, and Minister of Defence and Chairman of Internal and External Security Committees professes ignorance of Geneva Conventions, it is no wonder that one of his surrogates, the Minister of State for Defence, Maj. Gen. Tinyefunza, talked openly of taking few Captives in war and impudently told the journalists that,
I would not mind killing 700 or 7000 if they behave in such a manner as to become military targets. (The Citizen, Vol. 7 No. 45 week ending 22 May 1991)
Or when yet another surrogate the 310 Brigade Administrative Officer, Lt. Kanyarutokye, disclosed how civilians in operations against UPA in Teso would be used as a human shield:
The people, the local Defence Forces (LDFs) will lead the operation while the NRA will follow from behind.. The ordinary people will be armed with pangas, spears and clubs while the NRA will be armed with guns (Vol. 6 No. 114 Wednesday 15 May 1991 New Vision).
Amnesty International Reports, the United States Department of State reports to Congress; Human Rights Watch reports, the Uganda Law Society Reports and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York report of the Committee on International Human Rights, have all condemned the NRM/A regime for carrying out acts of extra-judicial executions, torture and illegal detentions, besides confirming that:
1. Ordinary civilians have been forced into grass thatched houses and burned alive, and any attempting to escape have been shot to death;
2. Men, women and children (both boys and girls) have been raped by the NRA whilst other members of the family watch (see Weekly topic 11 January 1991);
3. Food stocks for the wanainchi in granaries and the fields have been looted in operations code named simsim by the NRA or burned;
4. Livestock have been looted by the NRA sometimes under the guise of Karamojong who surpisingly take cattle to Kampala instead of Moroto or Kotido!
5. People have been incinerated in train wagons.
Following the Atanga massacre, Amnesty International reported,
That on May 3rd 1991, solders of the 106 Battalion of the NRA executed Moses in Kitgum town. And citing incidences of killings in other areas of Acholi, Wasswa Lule, the Inspector General of Government lamented that NRM sodomites were, responsible for the rapes and massacres of civilians in Alokolum, Lapon and Agung villages in Anaka division. Victims included Mr.Ongele who had complained to the army about the widespread rapes and looting of foodstuff.
One of the Verona Fathers Catholic Missionaries had an interview with Dr Ogenga Otunnu and spoke of the diabolical activities of the NRA in the following words;
These people (some of them are Ugandans) are quite excited about the armed struggle in Acholi.. Almost anybody they see during their operation, they shoot at or cut with their machetes or bayonets I also witnessed them mutilate unarmed people, including school children, the Holy Rosary Primary School. Some of these people had taken refuge at the Cathedral the irony, however, is that the surviving victims are often paraded by the soldiers or government functionaries before a group of reporters and asked to expose those who mutilated them. Naturally they would say the rebels did it.
Through intimidation and sophisticated propaganda machinery, the NRM has always covered up or blamed the so-called rebels for its atrocities in Acholiland. Dr Odora Obote has provided numerous accounts, in which the NRA engaged in gruesome mutilations. In summary he wrote;
From the middle of 1988, after the NRM/A government had effectively blocked journalists and foreign aid workers from freely travelling to northern Uganda, their methods of killing became even more ruthless. The NRA took pleasure in cutting off the lips and ears of their victims. They frequently blamed rebels for these atrocities even when they operated in areas where officially the rebels have been wiped out.
A typical case was the incidence at lamina dera near Labora on the 2nd July 1991 following the mass killings of civilians and the burning down of their houses. The Lamina dera incident caught the attention of the Ugandas national newspapers, and one of it reported that.
In the same incident 6 girls who had gone there to buy cassava had their lips chopped off . (Weekly Topic, Kampala, 26th July 1991).
In justifying the killings and the mutilations of civilians, an NRA officer boasted that,
This is not necessarily a bad military strategy because it strikes terror among the ordinary people and discourages them from supporting rebels. (Ogenga Otunnu).
These are the actions of a so-called disciplined army whose government has signed and sworn to uphold Human Rights Conventions. These, rather, are the actions of a government, which parades a Human Rights Commission, whose powers to investigate the NRA are curtailed. Its propaganda value is not lost to NRM/NRA and Lt. Gen. Museveni.
Indeed the Editorial of The Monitor of Friday December 25- January 1st, 1993 had questioned the population census figures of 1991 published in the New Vision when it wondered as to how the population of Teso had dramatically dropped from being the second highest to Buganda figured which for so long had been the case. The Editorial wondered whether the drop of the numbers was because several of them perished in the bitter wars between the NRA and the rebels?
Brig. Muhwezi did the world a favour when he responded to an accusation in the Shariat newspaper, which had written that:
The NRA had butchered a quarter of a million Iteso. (See Shariat of 20th, July 1994).
Muhwezi in his response is reported to have said in answer to Hussein Musa Njuki that:
It is wrong to use the word butchered, you would have used the word killed. The two words dont give the same meaning. (See The Shariat vol. 8, No. 30 of 26th, -31st, July 1994).
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