- LIRA -- The rebels laughed
as they handed 10-year-old Morris Ocen a burning branch and told him to
set fire to the thatched roof hut where his mother and four younger brothers
were cowering.
-
- Morris laughed too. Like every child in Northern Uganda
he knew about the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the terrible things
they did, but he could not believe they were serious.
-
- "I thought it was a joke," he said. "They
had told me I was their friend. But then they stopped laughing. They said
they would shoot me if I did not kill them."
-
- Morris had been nervous ever since the shooting started
at Bia, a camp near the town of Lira where his family and thousands of
others sought shelter from the LRA nightly raids on the villages of Northern
Uganda.
-
- As his mother and younger brothers hid under a bed Morris
was overcome with curiosity. He darted in and out of the hut to see what
was happening until he was caught by one of the rebels.
-
- "Everywhere houses were burning and people were
screaming," he said. "They had taken many people and tied them
up under a mango tree."
-
- As he watched, the rebels forced their captives to lie
face down on the ground before slamming four-feet-long pestles, used by
the residents of Bia to pound manioc roots, into the backs of their heads
until they died.
-
- Some were singled out for special treatment. A plank
was forced between their teeth before the pestles were smashed into their
skulls. The wood ripped through their cheeks and the roofs of their mouths,
condemning the disfigured victims, who would be unable to eat, to a slow
death through starvation.
-
- "They told me to hit the dead bodies with sticks,"
Morris said. "They said it was a game. Then they said let us go and
see your parents."
-
- Standing in front of his home, the burning branch in
his hand, Morris was now terrified. Closing his eyes, he raised it to the
grass roof and the flames quickly took hold. "I could hear all of
them screaming inside," he said.
-
- The LRA has waged a guerrilla war in Uganda's north for
the past 18 years. The movement is led by Joseph Kony, perhaps Africa's
most bizarre and sinister rebel leader.
-
- What began as a legitimate rebellion provoked by government
atrocities against members of the Acholi tribe has disintegrated into a
horrifying campaign with little apparent motive.
-
- Kony, a former priest heavily influenced by local mystic
beliefs, has said he wants Uganda to be brought under the LRA's 20 commandments.
-
- According to documents discovered after a battle, these
include, alongside the Biblical Ten Commandments, injunctions forbidding
the use of toothbrushes and the killing of snakes.
-
- Perhaps most odd is the 20th commandment which reads:
"Thou shalt have two testicles, neither more nor less."
-
- Kony claims to be possessed by several spirits, the chief
of whom is Lakwena, the ghost of an Italian First World War veteran who
died near the source of the Nile. The other spirits direct the war. Silly
Silindi, a female Sudanese spirit, is the chief commander.
-
- Among the other spirits are three Americans. Major Bianca
is head of intelligence, King Bruce is responsible for turning rocks into
handgrenades in mid-flight, while Jim Brickey, also known as "Who
Are You?", will switch sides and ensure a government victory if Kony's
disciples gather with witchcraft.
-
- "One of the spirits would possess him every day
and he would preach to us from nine in the morning until one o'clock,"
said Grace Angeyo, who lived in Kony's main camp outside the Sudanese town
of Juba for five years.
-
- Miss Angeyo, captured in 1999 when she was 15, was forced
to become a sex slave for one of Kony's senior commanders, Jimmy Ociti.
-
- "When he first tried to sleep with me I tried to
resist," she said. "I was taken to the punishment place where
they broke my arms and beat me until I lost consciousness."
-
- She paints a grim picture of life in the commune. Hundreds
of teenage girls have been forced to live as the concubines of Kony and
his men. The girls have given birth to hundreds of children, many fathered
by Kony, who demands sex several times a day.
-
- "Many people are executed," said Miss Angeyo,
who escaped last month with her baby daughter, named Unlucky.
-
- "He would say there was witchcraft. Once he picked
out 18 women and children and said they were witches. They were all killed."
-
- Kony's campaign is sustained by abducted children who
are beaten, brain-washed and trained to become killers, often by being
forced to murder fellow prisoners. More than 10,000 children have been
taken in 18 months.
-
- Driving across Northern Uganda is like seeing Africa
at its most sinister. Villages are deserted or often burned down. Crops
lie rotting in abandoned fields. The roads are empty too, save for occasional
army patrols.
-
- Eighty per cent of the population, close to 1.5 million
people, have fled the LRA onslaught to seek refuge in overcrowded camps
where they supposedly come under the protection of government forces and
allied militias.
-
- Yet the rebels seem to raid the camps with impunity,
carrying off children and slaughtering their parents. The government has
been accused by religious leaders and aid workers of turning a blind eye
to LRA atrocities.
-
- President Yoweri Museveni's soldiers have carried out
numerous executions of civilians they are supposed to be protecting in
apparent revenge for support given to the former dictator Milton Obote
by the local Acholi population in the 1980s.
-
- "We fear the army by day and the LRA by night,"
said one man in a camp in Gulu district. He would not give his name as
he feared losing his monthly food ration, donated by the United Nations
but delivered by government forces.
-
- In the last year, under international pressure, Mr Museveni
has begun to deal with the LRA. He has taken command of military operations,
basing himself in a camp in the bush, and has taken up an offer of US intelligence,
though not of military back-up.
-
- As the Sudanese government, which has backed the LRA
financially and militarily, distances itself from the movement, Mr Museveni
claims he is on the verge of victory. Helicopter gunships have gone into
action, striking LRA patrols, although most of the casualties have been
abducted children.
-
- But many remain sceptical. On Feb 21 the LRA committed
one of its worst atrocities, killing 337 people at a camp, near Lira town.
-
- In the past three days the rebels have killed at least
nine more people and abducted dozens of children.
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/20/
wugan20.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/20/ixworld.html
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