End Massacre of Uganda’s Karamojong

The atrocities are accompanied by a demonization campaign–The new government anti-Karamojong hate catch is "Karachuna," which characterizes all Karomojong as "warriors," thereby justifying the killing of innoncent civilians.

[Global: Africa]

A U.S. Ally In “War On Terror” Launches Terror Campaign At Home

If the International Criminal Court is serious, there is an ongoing case that it can look into –in addition to the ones that remain uninvestigated– in Uganda today.

There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the innocent ethnic Karamojong civilians in Uganda.

As darkness deepens over Karamoja region, the U.S.-allied Yoweri Museveni government continues with its brutal “disarmament program,” oblivious to the suffering of the law abiding innocent Karamojong civilians. Sadly enough, while this act of terror, similar to what happened in Acholi in the 1980s continues, Ugandans and the rest of the world remain mute.

According to available evidence from Karamoja, Uganda National Defense Force (UPDF) soldiers have been behaving in the same way as they did in Acholi, Lango and Teso; burning of grain stores, arresting the youth – “suspected warriors”– and opening fire on unarmed innocent civilians among other instances of undisciplined havoc and extra judicial killing in their “cordon-and-search disarmament exercise.”

For example, Nicholas Abul, the Kacheri LC III chairman, was quoted in the Daily Monitor, Uganda’s independent newspaper, of Thursday, April 29, 2010 as having said that a group of herdsmen who were recently killed in Kerichi Village, Kotido District “were unarmed and peacefully moving about with their cows.”

“The army should identify the warriors who were armed and those who are not. These people were not armed. I don’t know why they were attacked.”

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/908634/-/wy1iwt/-/index.html

During his tour of Karamoja, presidential candidate and the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) President, Dr. Kizza Besigye saw with his own eyes what was happening there and he accused the UPDF of “gross human rights abuses in their disarmament program.” Dr. Besigye told journalists at the FDC party headquarters in Najjanankumbi that the “abuses take the form of torture, beatings, and indiscriminate gunning of suspected rustlers.”

http://allafrica.com/stories/200911250015.html

More recently, while addressing journalists after a closed meeting with Med Kaggwa, the chairman of Uganda Human Rights Commission on Monday 28 June, the visiting Irish Foreign Affairs minister Michael Martin said human rights violations in Karamoja have become a “major international concern.”

“We are concerned about reports on human rights violation against women and children in Karamoja,” Martin said, adding that, “We have been assured by the commission that it is investigating extra-judicial killing by Ugandan military in Karamoja.”

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/948552/-/x1hnrc/-/index.html   

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