11.11.10 Congo/Central African Republic: LRA Victims Appeal to Obama
(Washington, DC,
November 11, 2010) – Victims of atrocities by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)
have sent emotional personal pleas to US President Barack Obama, calling for
urgent action to end attacks by the rebel group, Human Rights Watch said
today.
Human Rights Watch conducted five research missions to northern
Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic between May and
September 2010, in areas where few outsiders have traveled. Researchers spoke
with hundreds of victims, took their testimony, and recorded their messages to
Obama and other world leaders. Based on an analysis of this and other
information gathered in the region, Human Rights Watch called for a
comprehensive international strategy that places at its core the protection of
civilians.
Human Rights Watch on November 11, 2010, posted dozens of the
video postcards, testimonies, and letters from adults and children in the
region, appealing to Obama and other world leaders to help end the suffering
inflicted by the LRA.
“Even in the crush of politics at home, President
Obama and other world leaders should respond to the desperate cries of the LRA’s
victims,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights
Watch. “His leadership is urgently needed to work with governments in Europe and
Africa to protect civilians and arrest the war criminals responsible for the
attacks.”
The LRA, an
especially brutal rebel group that has caused havoc in the central African
region, has killed at least 2,385 civilians and abducted over 3,054 others since
September 2008, when regional peace talks collapsed, according to Human Rights
Watch and United Nations documentation. With the LRA attacking villages in
remote areas with limited communications, roads, and other infrastructure, the
actual number of victims is probably far higher.
One community leader was forced to
flee his home in Digba village, northern Congo, after the LRA attacked. He told
Human Rights Watch: "There are many dead. The LRA abducted our people, whipped
them, tied them up, killed them, and burned our homes. We have truly suffered a
lot because of the LRA."
In
May, Obama signed legislation requiring the US government to develop within 180
days a comprehensive, multilateral strategy to protect civilians in central
Africa from LRA attacks and to take steps to stop the rebel group’s violence.
Under the law, the new strategy is due by November 24.
The LRA was pushed
out of northern Uganda in 2005 after fighting the government for nearly two
decades. The rebel group now operates in the remote border regions of northern
Congo, the Central African Republic, and Southern Sudan.
Many of the LRA
victims were beaten to death, or their skulls were crushed with heavy wooden
sticks, Human Rights Watch said. LRA combatants tied others to trees, then
sliced their heads with machetes. The LRA forces abducted children to kill
family members and neighbors who try to escape, are tired or weak, or whom the
LRA decides it does not need.
In an attack in Duru, northern Congo, on
August 28, five LRA combatants abducted eight civilians less than a kilometer
from a UN peacekeeping base, and that night brutally killed three of the young
men taken with knives. A woman and 16-year-old girl released the next morning
told Human Rights Watch that the LRA gave them a message for the Congolese army:
“We are nearby, and we will be back soon.”
The LRA is estimated to have
between 200 to 400 armed combatants, plus hundreds of abductees. It has no
coherent political objectives and no popular support. It is able to replenish
its ranks only by abducting children, and sometimes adults, who are exposed to
immense brutality and forced to fight. Three of the LRA’s leaders – Joseph Kony,
Okot Odhiambo, and Dominic Ongwen – are sought by the International Criminal
Court (ICC) under arrest warrants issued in July 2005 for war crimes committed
in northern Uganda. All three remain at large and have been implicated in new
atrocities.
Ongoing military operations against the LRA, led by the
Ugandan army alongside national armies from the region and supported by the US
government, have failed to capture the LRA’s top leaders or end LRA attacks on
civilians. The Uganda army and their allies appear to lack the capability, will,
or expertise to apprehend the LRA’s top leaders, even though they have come in
close proximity to some senior commanders on several occasions in the past
year.
In an earlier letter to Obama, Human Rights
Watch urged the US government to use its diplomatic clout to bring together
like-minded world leaders who can commit political will, resources,
intelligence, and assistance for specialized units capable of arresting the
LRA’s top leaders wanted for war crimes and rescuing abductees, while at the
same time significantly enhancing UN, regional, and local capacities to protect
communities at risk of attack.
“The LRA’s top leaders can be found, but
the current strategy of supporting Ugandan army operations is clearly not
working,” Van Woudenberg said. “A new approach is needed to protect civilians
and to bring together improved intelligence and capable units to apprehend the
LRA’s top leaders. Otherwise, the LRA’s grave threat to civilians will
continue.”
Human Rights Watch has also called on the UN Security Council
to step up its efforts and advance capabilities such as rapid response to
protect civilians in areas affected by the LRA’s violence. While three
peacekeeping missions are in the affected areas, they lack a cross-border
mandate that would allow them to address the full scope of the LRA problem, and
they are not focused on addressing LRA violence.
The UN peacekeeping
force in Congo, MONUSCO, is the largest in the region, with nearly 18,000
troops, but only 850 UN peacekeeping troops are in the LRA-affected areas. No
peacekeepers are based in Bas Uele district, on the border with CAR, despite
repeated LRA attacks and abductions in the area over the past 20 months. The UN
has no peacekeepers in LRA-affected areas in CAR, and only a handful of UN
humanitarian staff. The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) is present in
Western Equatoria but has also proven ineffective at protecting civilians from
LRA attacks.
“The UN’s response to attacks on civilians and its
assistance to those in need has been woefully inadequate, so at the very least
the UN needs to deploy more of its existing forces to LRA-affected areas,” Van
Woudenberg said. “The UN Security Council should urgently discuss this regional
threat and commit further action and resources to protect civilians at risk from
the LRA.”
Based on recent reports, the LRA’s leader, Joseph Kony, may
have moved to the border region between the Central African Republic and South
Darfur, an area controlled by Sudan’s Khartoum government. In the past, Sudan
provided important military support to the LRA.
Human Rights Watch called
on the Sudanese government to ensure no support of any kind is provided to the
LRA, and urged the US government and other world leaders to pressure the
Sudanese government to ensure that the LRA does not find refuge in Darfur.
Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir is also wanted by the ICC for crimes against
humanity in Darfur.
To view a special
multimedia feature that includes video messages from victims of the LRA to
President Barack Obama, please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/94226
To download or embed video footage
and a high-resolution photo, please visit:
http://hrwnews.org/distribute/lra_dearobama_102810/preview.html
For more information,
please contact:
In
London, Anneke Van Woudenberg (English, French): +44-207-713-2786; or +44 (0)
77-11-66- 4960 (mobile); or woudena@hrw.org
In Kampala, Ida Sawyer (English, French): +256-77-814-3581 (mobile);
or +243 (0) 99-86-75-565; or sawyeri@hrw.org
In Washington, DC, Tom Malinowski (English): +1-202-612-4358; or
+1-202-309-3551 (mobile)
In New York, Rona Peligal (English): +1-212-216-1232; +1-917-363-3893
(mobile); or peligar@hrw.org
In Brussels, Reed Brody (English,
French, Portuguese, Spanish): +32-2737-1489; or +32-498-625786 (mobile)
In New York, Philippe Bolopion
(English, French): +1-212-216-1276; or +1-917-734-3201
(mobile)
Accounts from LRA Victims
Claude, a 14-year-old boy
from Dakwa village (Bas Uele District, northern
Congo):
Claude [not his real name] was taken by the LRA on June 2, 2009, when
the rebels abducted about 55 people from Dakwa.
“The LRA attacked around
9 p.m. while everyone in the village was gathered for my brother’s funeral,” he
told Human Rights Watch. “They came suddenly and started grabbing people, tying
our wrists behind our backs and tying us to together in a chain.”
Claude
explained that the LRA fired in the air, killed a policeman, and looted
medicine, rice, peanuts, chickens, and other goods from the village, then forced
their captives, including Claude, to transport the stolen goods into the forest.
The adults were freed the next day, but the LRA kept Claude and the other
children and took them to their temporary camp. Claude told Human Rights Watch
how he was forced to kill two children who tried to flee from the
LRA.
“The other children and I had to beat them over the head with large
wooden sticks,” he said. “One was a 12-year-old boy from Banda, and the other
was a 14-year-old boy from Bayule village.”
Claude also had to kill
several adults the LRA had captured. “They often captured adults to transport
things, but whenever we arrived at the base, they would order us to kill them,”
he said. Claude managed to escape after nearly a year in captivity with the
LRA.
“My message to President Obama is a plea for him to do all he can to
save the kids who are still with the LRA and to make all the LRA combatants go
home,” Claude said.
Eveline, a 12-year-old girl from
Botolegi village (Bas Uele District, northern Congo):
Eveline
[not her real name] was abducted in December 2009 with three other children from
her village:
When we got to the chief’s camp. I was given
to be the wife of an LRA named Nyogo. I was his servant and wife. He was very
mean and aggressive, especially on days when he had to kill people. When they
brought people to the camp, they wouldn’t free the adults because they were
afraid they might show the camp to the soldiers. That’s why they made us kill
them. I can’t remember how many people I killed in total – one day four people,
another day three people. They tied the victims’ hands behind their backs and
also tied a cord around their legs and sometimes around their neck. They would
force the person to lie on the ground, with their face to the ground. Then if
the LRA wanted us to kill them, they would give us a piece of wood and tell us
to hit them on the head.”
Eveline managed to escape when the LRA was attacked near Samungu in
June 2010.
“The message I have for President Obama and the international
community,” she said, “is that I want them to move the [LRA] out of Congo, and
free all the children who are trapped in their hands.”
Bridget, a 47-year-old woman from
Kpanangbala village (Haut Uele District, northern
Congo):
Bridget was sitting outside her home with her husband
and brother when a group of LRA attacked her village. She tried to flee but the
LRA grabbed her. They stabbed her husband to death in front of her and looted
her home. Bridget managed to run away, but the LRA tied up her brother and
marched away with him, back into the forest. Three days later, Bridget found his
body. He and five other men had been stabbed to death deep in the forest outside
her village.
“I’m not at ease because of all that I have seen,” she said.
“My hope is that the international community can take measures to sanction the
rebels who killed my husband and brother, and make them leave Congo. We have
suffered far too much.”
Emmanuel, president of
an LRA victims’ association in Obo (CAR):
Emmanuel is a 32-year-old man from Obo in
southeastern CAR. On March 6, 2008, he was abducted by the LRA along with at
least 46 other civilians and forced to march hundreds of kilometers to the LRA’s
camp in Garamba National Park in Congo. Emmanuel was held captive and pressed
into forced labor by the LRA. He only managed to escape 18 months
later.
“I suffered so much as a result of the Tongo Tongo [local name for
LRA],” he said. “I lived through and witnessed many crimes, I killed people, and
I have come back with tragically painful scars. I am not myself, and I don’t
have the means to do much or to cultivate the farm like I used to do. I take the
opportunity now to ask my president Barack Obama to help us …Many of our
brothers, our children, our mothers, and our fathers are dead because of the
[LRA].”