Africanews
Joseph Kony's guerrillas of the Lord's Resistance Army murdered at least 110 Sudanese refugees in three raids against Acholpii Camp, 80 kilometers South of Kitgum town, on the 13th and 14th of July. Despite the fact that the Ugandan army officially launched a military operation to flush out the rebel, the fact that UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) soldiers stationed 12 kilometers away from the camp did not intervene casts doubts about the capacity or the willingness of the government and the military to solve the problem. |
A Sudanese woman who survived the attack carried out by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) against the Sudanese refugees in Acholpii, sits discouraged on the floor of St. Joseph's Hospital, in Kitgum Mission. She is there taking care of her three wounded children: two of them sustained gunshot wounds and the third one, four months old, had his head slashed with a machete. "Very early on Sunday morning" - "she says, a group of rebels invaded the camp and started pulling us out of our huts. After making us walk in a line they assembled us under a big tree in front of the Church and without saying a word opened fire".
Ninety people died in that massacre, although many others could have been burnt to death inside their huts, set alight by Kony's guerrillas. The day before, Saturday the 13th, the rebels had launched two other attacks in the same camp: early in the morning and at around 4 p.m., destroying the health centre, burning several UN vehicles and two food store warehouses. On Saturday's attack twenty people were killed.
Fr. Julius, a Sudanese priest who is the chaplain of the camp, arrived in Kitgum on Monday evening and went back to the camp on the following morning. He relates how two Uganda sisters of the congregation of Mary Mother of the Church had to spend the night in the bush like many other of the 15,000 camp dwellers.
Another man, who preferred anonymity, expressed his indignation over the fact that a UPDF garrison station at Kilak corner, 12 kilometers away from the camp, did not intervene during the two days in which the massacre took place: "One of the drivers of United Nations went to Kilak several times to inform them of what was going on, but we never saw them in the camp. They are soldiers only by name".
According to military intelligence sources, the group of about five hundred rebels crossed the Sudanese border on the 8th of July. One wonders how, despite the fact that the Ugandan army is currently engaged in a military operation to wipe out the guerrillas, Kony's men were able to penetrate more than 120 Kilometers south of the border without being intercepted by the security forces. The UPDF has been repeatedly accused by opposition politicians and many ordinary citizens of passivity and inefficiency in front of armed insurgency whose victims are mostly innocent civilians.
Rebels of the LRA have been fighting against Museveni's government almost for the last ten years. After a peaceful break from mid-91 to end of 93, they resumed their attacks, being well armed and supported by Khartoum's Islamic fundamentalist regime, which seeks to destabilize Uganda for their alleged support to the SPLA.
During the month of May another Ugandan rebel group, the West Nile Bank Front (WNBF), led by Amin's former officer Juma Oris, raided three Sudanese refugees camps in West Nile, although without carrying out massacres of such caliber. Several aid agencies withdrew as a result and have ever since tried to mount pressure on the Ugandan government to improve security before they can resume their activities.
Acholpii Refugee Camp was opened in 1993 and it was run by the Italian aid agency AVSI, whose expatriate personnel normally reside in Kitgum and have not been going to the camp since February this year because of the current insecurity.
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