Latest news with #Acholi
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
What happened to Joseph Kony? From altar boy to warlord who abducted tens of thousands of boys and girls to become child soldiers or sex slaves but somehow evades justice
From farmer's son and altar boy to self-proclaimed messiah, zealous rebel, ruthless warlord - and perhaps most frustrating of all for those seeking justice - master of evasion. For the tens of thousands of Ugandans whose lives he decimated, Joseph Kony was - and remains - a loathsome figure, but without doubt his life now is a far cry from his more wholesome roots. As the leader of The Lord's Resistance Army, a cultish militant group that operates in central Africa, he was said to be responsible for mass rape, kidnapping and murder - as well as the military enslavement of more than 30,000 children. In 2005, he was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for a variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But despite endless efforts by skilled military personnel, Kony has continuously escaped capture and remains on the run as one of Africa's most wanted men. Sources say that Kony is so adept at keeping out of the way of authorities that he has ditched satellite phones in favour of runners for communication with his supporters, while at times he has lived in the bush, surviving off wild roots and animals. But life was not always this way. Kony was born in 1961 as a member of Uganda's northern Acholi ethnic group to a family of six children. Both his parents were farmers and regular churchgoers, with his father being a Catholic, and his mother an Anglican. He served as an altar boy until the age of 15, before rising to prominence in the Holy Spirit Movement, a rebel group led by Alice Auma Lakwena, a former prostitute believed to have been his aunt. The movement was formed after Ugandan president Tito Okello, an Acholi, was overthrown in January 1986 by the National Resistance Army (NRA). Lakwena, who died in exile in Kenya in early 2007, believed she could channel the spirits of the dead, and also told her followers that the holy oil she gave them could stop bullets. The rebellion - which Kony eventually went on to lead - claimed to defend the Acholi people against NRA President Yoweri Museveni. But when army troops crushed the movement and Lakwena fled into Kenya, Kony founded the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and proclaimed himself as the people's prophet. Despite widespread northern resentment against Museveni, Kony's extremist policies - which were designed to terrify his subordinates into obedience - made him a figure of fear rather than admiration among his people. Aspiring to rule Uganda according to a mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism and Christian fundamentalism, Kony - a self-proclaimed spokesperson of God with more than 60 wives - turned against his supporters to 'purify' his people and carried out a series of horrific assaults, including rape and indiscriminate killings. Kony forcibly recruited young boys to serve as his next generation of soldiers, while girls were kidnapped and kept as sex slaves. His terrifying rule over Ugandans inspired a bloody rebellion that spread to Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. Tens of thousands of atrocities were carried out in the names of the LRA for more than two decades, but following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the group was officially designated as a terrorist group by the US governments. It spelt the beginning of the end for his reign of terror. By 2005, the self-proclaimed prophet - along with four of his deputies - were the first people indicted by the ICC in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Support for the LRA was beginning to wane. When Sudan signed a peace deal with the southern rebels in 2005 and the group was forced into neighbouring DR Congo by the Ugandan army, Kony agreed to hold peace talks. But negotiations dragged on and, amid mutual distrust and anxiety over the ICC warrant, Kony repeatedly failed to turn up to sign a deal. He decided instead to continue living on the run - sparking a widespread and prolonged manhunt that to the dismay of the world - and his victims - has still not reaped the reward of his capture. So what has been up to since then? Kony, who is thought to be in his 50s, speaks broken English and Acholi and has only rarely met outsiders, but in an interview with a western journalist in 2006 he insisted that he was 'not a terrorist' and had not committed atrocities. 'We want the people of Uganda to be free. We are fighting for democracy,' he claimed. Nevertheless, ex-LRA abductees have a very different viewpoint. Some say they were forced to maim and kill friends, neighbours and relatives, as well as participate in gruesome rites such as drinking their victims' blood. In late 2011, following pressure from US campaigners, President Barack Obama agreed to deploy US special forces troops to help local armies track down Kony. He then surged to unexpected worldwide prominence in March 2012 on the back of a hugely popular internet video that called for his capture. Made by US-based advocacy group Invisible Children, the Kony2012 film highlighted LRA's alleged crimes, including the abduction of children for use as sex slaves or fighters. It became one of the fastest-spreading internet videos in history after more than 100 million users across the globe watched it in just a few days. The story took another strange twist later that year when Angelina Jolie, Oscar-winning film star, international humanitarian, United Nations special envoy and all-round sex bomb, offered to come to the ICC's rescue - by offering herself as a honeytrap to capture Kony. Documents leaked from the ICC show that Jolie had offered to be embedded with US Special Forces close to the warlord's stronghold in northern Uganda and 'has the idea to invite Kony to dinner and then arrest him'. The plan apparently came to nothing more than a bizarre bookmark in a tale of a rebel leader who has still not been brought to justice. Those efforts were further hampered in 2017 when Uganda's military and the United States both announced they would end their pursuit of Kony - saying its mission had been 'successfully achieved' even though the rebel leader remains at large. Uganda started pulling its forces from Central African Republic, which for years had acted as a base for troops chasing the rebels, just a day after the US said the active membership of Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) now only numbered less than 100. Before that decision, around 1,500 Ugandan troops had been deployed in Central African Republic under an African Union military mission to defeat the LRA. With the troops now withdrawn, attention turned instead to one of Kony's former commanders, Dominic Ongwen, whose nom de guerre was 'White Ant'. He was indicted by the ICC and convicted in 2021 of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ongwen is currently serving a 25-year jail sentence for 61 charges, including murder, rape and sexual enslavement His lawyers had pleaded for mitigation considering he was one of Kony's child soldiers, having been kidnapped on the way to school by LRA militants aged just nine. In October 2024, Thomas Kwoyelo - another former child soldier who later became a rebel commander under Kony - was sentenced by a court in Uganda to 40 years in prison for his role in the LRA's brutal crimes. Kwoyelo will serve only 25 years in jail as he has been in government custody for 15 years, the court ruled. His sentencing applied to the most serious crimes he faced, including multiple counts of murder, rape, pillaging, and enslavement. Kwoyelo, who denied the charges against him, testified that only Kony could answer for LRA crimes, and said everyone in the LRA faced death for disobeying the warlord. But Grace Apio, a Ugandan victim of the LRA insurgency, said at the time that the sentencing 'is very little for us, the victims.' She added: 'We feel very sentence will encourage other people who want to start a war that in Uganda, after committing these atrocities, you will end up with a light sentence and then you come back to society and start your life again.' Kwoyelo was convicted in August 2024 on 44 of the 78 counts he faced for crimes committed during the insurgency between 1992 and 2005. News of Kony fell silent again until February of this year, when it was reported that one of his wives and three children had been repatriated from Central African Republic, Ugandan authorities said. Then in April, the ICC confirmed the award of €52 million (£45m) to victims of Ongwen, including a 'symbolic' payment of €750 (£632) for each of the near 50,000 victims identified in the case. ICC judges ruled Ongwen personally ordered his soldiers to carry out massacres of more than 130 civilians at the Lukodi, Pajule, Odek and Abok refugee camps between 2002 and 2005. While the court acknowledged he had been kidnapped as a 'defenceless child', judges said this did not mitigate his guilt. The court's Trust Fund for Victims will arrange for the reparations to be made as Ongwen - currently serving his sentence in a Norwegian prison - was unable to pay. For Kony's victims these are all small steps towards the justice they have sought for more than 30 years. But Kony himself remains at large - despite being wanted by the ICC and even with a generous $5m reward offered by US authorities. Sources say he is hiding somewhere in ungoverned territories in Central African Republic - and is more than adept at remaining hidden. For the ICC however, the charges against Kony are so horrific that they can no longer go unheard. For that reason, it plans to hold a hearing in absentia on September 9. His victims can only hope that one day Kony himself will be the one to stand in court and hear them.
Zawya
09-04-2025
- Politics
- Zawya
Ugandan warlord Ongwen fails to stop $57mln reparations
Ugandan warlord Dominic Ongwen has lost his appeal against a heavy penalty imposed by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his war crimes. On Monday, the ICC's Appeals Chamber upheld the Trial Chamber's judgement ordering Ongwen to pay $57 million in reparations to the victims of his crimes against humanity and war crimes in northern Uganda. The Appeals Chamber ruled that the Trial Chamber's decision not to disclose the names of the victims to the defence was justified on security grounds and did not unduly affect the defence's right to conduct a meaningful review of the victims' testimonies. The Appeals Chamber also found that there was no error in rejecting the defence's argument regarding the alleged duplication of victims' claims before both the Ugandan courts and the ICC. The Appeals Chamber noted that the compensation discussed before national tribunals was different from the reparations awarded by the ICC. It concluded that the defence had failed to explain how the Acholi traditional mechanisms should be incorporated into the reparation system under the ICC's legal texts and how such incorporation would affect the scope of Ongwen's liability for reparations. The $57 million collective community-based reparations focused on rehabilitation and symbolic/satisfactory measures, consisting of collective rehabilitation programmes, as well as a symbolic award of $822 to each eligible victim, and other symbolic community measures. Ongwen and some of the victims' legal representatives were allowed to participate in the hearing remotely. Besides Bossa, the other judges were Tomoko Akane, Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, Gocha Lordkipanidze and Erdenebalsuren Damdin. © Copyright 2022 Nation Media Group. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
CBC
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek's novel maps the stories of Uganda's abducted children
Social Sharing WARNING: This story contains details of abuse. In the novel We, the Kindling, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek weaves together stories of women who were abducted as children by a rebel militia in northern Uganda. Through the writing, each powerful voice tells a haunting story of loss, survival, friendship and what it means to hold on to hope, no matter how small. Drawing from real-life accounts, Bitek used fiction to reckon with missing details and massage the horrific truth. "I respect stories so much that I wanted to be able to tell this story without further harming whoever is going to read it," she said on Bookends with Mattea Roach. Bitek, a poet and scholar born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, currently lives in Kingston, Ont. Her work includes poetry collections 100 Days, A is for Acholi, which won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Song & Dread. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is open April 1-June 1. You can submit an original, unpublished poem or collection of poems. The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. Bitek joined Roach to talk about being Acholi in Canada, using facts to inform her fiction and exploring the cartography of Uganda through stories. Mattea Roach: In your poetry collection A is for Acholi, you consider what it means to be an Acholi woman living in Canada. You write that Acholi is an expansive way of being in the world. What does that expansive way of being in the world look like for you? Otoniya J. Okot Bitek: The daughter of the diaspora is what I would call myself. To claim an Acholi identity doesn't mean I live in Acholi, it means I live elsewhere. To claim an Acholi identity also doesn't mean I speak the language fluently or that I have all the cultural practices. It means that I have and I carry a memory, a sense of being, a way of being in the world. That is from northern Uganda, from the Acholi people, which is where my parents were, both born and grew up in. In We, the Kindling you weave together these stories of several Ugandan women who were abducted as children by a militia called the Lord's Resistance Army. Can you talk a bit about the history that you're exploring in this novel? The Lord's Resistance Army was formed in 1987. Before that, the government of Uganda was overthrown by the National Resistance Movement, which was led by Yoweri Museveni, who is still president, in early 1985. And immediately there was a lot of resistance by people in the North and there were groups that relented and there were groups that gave up. Among the groups that relented was one led by a woman called Alice Lakwena. And she led the Holy Spirit movement, but she was defeated. Out of that, many people who were in the Holy Spirit movement went on to form the Lord's Resistance Army, which was led by Joseph Kony in 1987. The government of Uganda was in this insane situation where they were fighting an army made of citizens and kids in their own country. But different from the other groups, which relied on people joining them intentionally, the Lord's Resistance Army relied on kidnapping kids, other people too, other grown people too, but mostly kids, and forcing them to join the army and fight. It went on for more than a couple of decades. So the government of Uganda was in this insane situation where they were fighting an army made of citizens and kids in their own country. In the case of We, the Kindling, you drew on real survivor accounts to craft these stories that we encounter in the novel. Can you talk a bit about how you put this together and the responsibility that you maybe feel to some of these survivors whose stories appear here? I was working as an academic doing a PhD teaching and studying how the importance of agency and and histories of violence in different spaces, trauma histories, the Holocaust and the generations that came after that, and what it means to be silent, what it means to have agency, what it means to be able to tell your own stories. Initially, I was working with professor Erin Baines from [the University of British Columbia]. She had all these transcripts of women who were told their stories and she asked me, what can we do with that? I initially started a project of a creative nonfiction story because I was interested in just having the exact story out there to be told. And then I realized that with creative nonfiction and other kinds of writing that rely on facts that can be proven that would mean that I could not write a lot of things, and also that would mean that I'd have to think about my own position right in telling it. What sorts of things do you think you wouldn't have been able to include had you written We, the Kindling as more of a creative nonfiction piece? For example, I write about rape — and the rapes happened. Rapes happened to a lot of people. But an accusation of rape usually means you have to have a victim, a date, a time, and those kinds of things. Those are not things I can prove. In fiction, I can do that. Also, these women who were girls at the time, they traversed so many different landscapes. Where on the map would I put those places? And so I'd have to leave that out. In fiction, I could do that. How are we meant to read this map of northern Uganda and South Sudan that you set up in this novel? I wanted to hark back to an unmapped territory, but I also wanted to think about the land as a storyteller. What you know about a place is how well you can read being there. I also wanted to think about haunting. I wanted to think about ghosts. I wanted to think about all other kinds of presences that we don't usually think about when we think about a map. So I wanted you to have the sense of having other presences with you on this territory that is not familiar. And I also really want to get away from the idea that we have to read stories that are relatable, right? Stories where we can see ourselves in. So many of us have been brought up in literatures in which we could not see ourselves. What you know about a place is how well you can read being there. But also, the experience of being abducted and taken to a foreign land is an experience of disorientation. So I do want the reader to feel disoriented and not to have a sure sense of where they are, but to pay attention to what's around them. If you were to create your own map of Uganda, the one that's in your memory and imagination, and that you've kind of continued to map out through your fiction writing, what would it look like? First of all, I would not, I'm not really interested in colonial borders, but I would say that I'm much more interested in my identity as an Acholi person. I'm interested in how people work together and live together and so that actually people are scattered across the world. There's a healthy community of Acholi people here in Toronto. So we don't need to be contained in a border that's defined, especially one that's defined by other people. But I would map it through stories. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Katy Swailes.
