http://www.freep.com/news/nw/uganda14e_20041014.htm
According to the Bible, this kind of behavior is sanctioned by the the
gods of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims--- the desert war god
Yahweh.
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Ugandan recalls stolen childhood
Hundreds return home after being enslaved by rebels
Detroit Free Press, October 14, 2004]
By Sudarsan Raghaven, Foreign Correspondent
ABOKE, Uganda -- Five days after she was abducted in the night from
her Catholic boarding school, Charlotte Awino learned how to kill. She
was 14.
The girl she killed, who was even younger than she was, had tried to
escape from the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that had
kidnapped thousands of Ugandan children. The rebels ordered Charlotte
and 29 other schoolgirls to execute her.
They refused. The rebels beat them with guns and machetes, and gave
the order again. This time, they obeyed.
"They told us to gather stones and beat her to death," Charlotte
recalled, her voice quivering. "If you wanted to live, you did it."
She lived in servitude for the next eight years, until she escaped
last July.
Charlotte Awino is one of hundreds who were kidnapped as children and
are returning home after years in captivity. A rebel amnesty program
and new attacks by the Ugandan army have changed the shape of the
18-year civil war between the LRA and Uganda's government.
More than 25,000 children have been abducted -- half of them in the
past two years -- during the war in Uganda, but their plight has
received far less attention than the humanitarian tragedy in
neighboring Sudan. The United Nations has gotten less than half of the
humanitarian aid it has requested for northern Uganda, and the UN
Children's Fund has received only a fifth of what it needs.
Tall and shy, Awino, now 22, speaks softly as she recalls the day when
the rebels raided St. Mary's College, a convent school run by Italian
nuns in the tiny northern village of Aboke. Fast asleep, she woke to
banging on the door of her dormitory shortly after midnight on Oct.
10, 1996. Then windows shattered. The rebels were inside.
They ordered 139 girls, ages 13 to 17, to tie one another's hands.
They marched them through the rain, across the green lawn, and out the
front gate.
Armed boys not much older than the girls whipped them like cattle.
Many had been abducted themselves, but they now swore allegiance to
the LRA, more out of fear than loyalty.
One courageous nun, Sister Rachele Fassera, followed the group, and
before they crossed into Sudan, she confronted the rebel commander.
She dropped to her knees and begged him to release the girls.
Moved, he chose the 30 prettiest girls and surrendered the rest.
"If you still keep insisting, we'll kill the 30, and you can take back
their corpses," Awino recalled the commander telling the nun.
Three weeks later, Awino and her best friend, Jessica, were forced to
"marry" a rebel commander who was as old as their grandfathers.
"We were slaves to one master. We had to obey his every wish," Awino
said. "If you were lucky, you were beaten only twice a week."
Every day, Awino was ordered to dig for vegetables. She became
pregnant at 16, and again at 18. She survived on prayers and memories
from a happier past. She and Jessica took care of each other.
Less than a year after her daughter was abducted, Angelina Atyam,
Charlotte's mother -- the cofounder of the Concerned Parents
Association and Uganda's best-known advocate for the kidnapped
children -- met with an LRA commander. The rebel leader said Charlotte
would be released if Atyam ended her campaign, which had galvanized
the nation.
Atyam said no.
"It was a difficult choice, but it was worth it," Atyam recalled in
her office in the town of Lira, about 15 miles from Aboke. "Not that I
had a desire to sacrifice my daughter for others. But we are a family.
Can you choose a family member and say kill this one, and leave this
one alive? You can't."
Every day was a reminder of the choice she'd made not to bargain for
her daughter's release.
"Whenever food was ready at the table, we wondered what the children
are eating. Whenever it was raining, we wondered if our children were
covered for the night," Atyam said.
Awino said she understood her mother's choice. "I don't feel any
hatred toward her," she said.
Her best friend, Jessica, was killed in an attack earlier this year.
Awino was luckier. The attacks created so much disarray in her unit
that she was able to sneak away. She returned with her children to
Uganda, where she was reunited with her mother.
"When she saw me from a distance, she put her baby down and ran to
meet me, and we screamed," Atyam said, her voice choking with emotion.
"For quite some time, we couldn't speak, we couldn't talk. I could
only cry."
Awino now lives with her mother in a tiny, dark house. She changed the
name of her 2-year-old son from Otti, after an LRA commander. Now,
he's called Miracle.
Sidebar:
UGANDAN RESISTANCE
The Lord's Resistance Army is a shadowy religious cult that says it is
Christian and has fought an 18-year-old civil war to topple the
Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni.
Led by a religious militant named Joseph Kony, the LRA wants to
replace Museveni with a government based on the Ten Commandments. It
has abducted more than 25,000 Ugandan children over the past two
decades and pressed them into its guerrilla forces as soldiers and sex
slaves. Sudan is widely believed to have backed the LRA in response to
Uganda's alleged support of southern rebels fighting the Sudanese
regime.
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"Terrorism" isn't the enemy: George W Bush is!
http://lastliberal.org
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