SARA: It’s a nightly ritual and the shame of Africa. Thousands of children walk from their villages into the town of Gulu in Northern Uganda. If they stay at home and sleep in their own beds, they risk being kidnapped by rebels. ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: The children find themselves helpless,
the same as the parents. The parents cannot protect them against abductions.
SARA: In the past year more than five thousand children have been abducted. It’s a savage and depraved conflict that has stolen the lives of a generation. As an outside it’s difficult to comprehend, but this exodus has become part of everyday life here in Gulu. The locals know that if they stay at home at night they’re at risk of being abducted, mutilated or killed by the rebels.
After dark, these back roads are on the frontline of one of Africa’s most brutal and pointless conflicts. A war which is destroying the lives of thousands of children.
Singing/drums
The children rally at makeshift centres singing prayers before bedtime. Every night around fifteen thousand youngsters gather in the relative safety of the town. The war’s been going on for seventeen years. The fear of abduction has become part of growing up in Northern Uganda.
ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: Society depends on the children. Without the children there is no future for a society, for any society, whether it be the Church or civil society, nothing.
SARA: These children survived capture by a brutal militia bizarrely called the Lords Resistance Army, the LRA. They’ve escaped and they’re sheltering at a centre run by World Vision in Gulu. Many were forced to serve as child soldiers with the LRA and some were forced to kill.
DAVID: I didn’t want to kill her, but they forced me. They said “if you don’t, you are a dead body.” So that’s why I killed her.
SARA: Fourteen year old David was abducted by the LRA when he was walking home. We’ve concealed his identity and changed his name to protect him. The rebels ordered David to kill his father.
DAVID: I started trembling. I asked God, please help me so that my father can escape -- and my father did escape.
SARA: Without his father as a ready victim, David and two other boys were then told to kill a woman in a neighbouring village.
DAVID: First we hit her with an axe. Then we poured paraffin on her and set her alight.
SARA: The woman begged for her life.
DAVID: She said “my son you’re killing me for nothing… you’re killing me for nothing, you’re killing me for nothing. They told me to hit the back of her head. I hit her once, she collapsed. She started convulsing and we left.
SARA: It was a chilling induction to the LRA. The rebels routinely force the children they kidnap to kill family members or neighbours in the hope that they’ll be too scared to go home. David was also trained to fight.
DAVID: They asked me if I wanted a gun. I said yes, I want one. So they gave me a gun and said now you know the parts of the gun and you know how to fight.
Music
SARA: The people of northern Uganda are being terrorised by the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA is a guerilla group which hides in the bush and rarely shows itself – except to abduct, terrorise and kill. The LRA says it wants to overthrow the Ugandan Government.
but it doesn’t have popular support - its hard core only numbers in hundreds. It has to kidnap children to fill its ranks, and it’s only survived this long, because of help from the government of neighbouring Sudan.
Church bells
SARA: The local Catholic clergy in Gulu know the LRA rebels better than most. That’s because the rebels have stolen more than a dozen two-way radios during raids on church missions. Father Carlos Rodriguez Soto has spoken to Joseph Kony.FATHER CARLOS: It seems to be a group that depends very, very heavily on one single person, that is Joseph Kony.
He told us he was declaring a cease fire on the 3rd of March and we had some hope that if that was true it could open the path for a negotiated settlement but that cease fire was never respected.
Church bells
SARA: The Church is calling for an end to the fighting. John Baptist Odoma is the Catholic Archbishop of Gulu. He says the war has gone on for too long.
ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: Some sense of humility is needed, because seventeen years is quite enough time, yeah? If it was three or four years, well that is understandable -- seventeen years --and there is no immediate end to it, we can’t say it is going to be finished soon. No.
SARA: Archbishop Odoma is one of the few outsiders to have met and negotiated with the rebels. He doesn’t excuse the LRA, but believes the Government should start talking to them.
ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: I think the Government needs to do more. It cannot say I have done enough unless this war is stopped, and those at the LRA have to do something greater than what they have done so far.
Music
SARA: But Uganda’s President isn’t looking for advice. He’s confident that he can end the war by force. There’ll be no negotiations. PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: Why don’t the Americans negotiate with Al Qaeda?
You must know that there are groups which are beyond the boundaries of negotiations.
SARA: Uganda has asked the United States to help with intelligence and logistics, but it doesn’t want US troops on the ground.
SARA: Why not ask for some international help?PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: We don’t need international help to defend ourselves.
I always hear that question but what are we for if we can’t defend ourselves?
Music
SARA: The sheer brutality of this war defies belief. Helen Lanyom narrowly escaped with her life when the LRA raided her village. She was asleep when the rebels forced their way into her house. They used machetes to cut off her lips.
HELEN LANYOM: About five people ordered me to get out of the house. When I got out, they started tying me and ordered me to lay down on the ground. They were pressing down on me really hard and one of them started cutting my lips. I lost consciousness till the cold morning hours when the government forces arrived to rescue me.
SARA: How young were the rebels who did this?
HELEN LANYOM: They were young children. There were two very young ones and one of them asked the others not to steal my money. I had fifty thousand shillings on me. He said, “cut off her lips but don’t take her money.” They took the money and killed that boy too.
SARA: Barbarity is the trademark of the LRA. The victims are mutilated and sent back to the community as a warning. It wasn’t until Helen was in hospital that she realised what had happened.
HELEN LANYOM: I realised what had happened only when I started to eat. They were feeding me through a tube and when I put my hands up to touch my mouth, I realised it was cut.
SARA: It’s a conflict that’s been going on and off for seventeen years. When Yoweri Museveni became President in 1986, the war was just beginning. He believes the rebels have been contained, but admits the bloodshed has gone on for too long.PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: It’s a shortfall on our side.
The group has been contained but it has not been eliminated.
ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: We have gone to him several times. One time he tells us, oh yes this thing is going to be finished very quickly, very quickly, very quickly. Then one month passes, two months, three months so we say, hey, President what is happening? You are frustrating us, you know? Yeah.
SARA: What’s your message to the people of Northern Uganda who are living in the middle of this conflict?
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: Patience -- we shall finish this problem.
SARA: Why should they have confidence?
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: Because we have won victories in the past and everybody knows it, in Uganda. People in Uganda know we mean what we say and we say what we mean.
SARA: The victims of the war are running out of patience. They want the President to start paying attention to the suffering.
HELEN LANYOM: This is the question -- Museveni, I got this injury under your government but you don’t care about us. You should care especially about me -- I’ve been to your office twice.
Music
SARA: Agnes Laluru knows the violent tactics of the LRA. Every night she and her children leave their village and walk into Gulu to sleep. Agnes was just fifteen when she was kidnapped by the rebels. She became one of the LRA’s most notorious commanders.
AGNES LALURU: After the torture I’ve seen and been through -- if a child of mind was abducted, I know if he got tired walking a long way, he’d be beaten to death. He’d die because he’d be too tired to walk any further.
SARA: Agnes fears that the rebels will come back for her and her family. Each night she checks her children into a local school where they’ll be safe. She knows the horrors of the LRA first hand. AGNES LALURU: As far as killing people goes,
I didn’t pick up an axe and beat someone to death, no. But, when I was sent to the battlefield to kill someone, you had to kill them before they killed you. I did that.
SARA: These days Agnes sells vegetables at Gulu’s main market, her bloody past unknown to most of her customers. She’s trying to leave the war behind.
AGNES LALURU: You can’t understand the truth about this war. If you claim to be trying to help the people by fighting the government, you don’t abduct and kill civilians or abduct young children and torture them. In my view, this is not a war to take over Gulu, let alone the government. It’s simply terrorism.
Music
SARA: Northern Uganda is under siege. Six days a week, heavily armed Ugandan soldiers ride shot gun as the United Nations world food program delivers aid. The Ugandan Government has surrendered much of the countryside here, yet argues that it’s the rebels who are on the run.
LIEUTENANT ISAAC MUWA: For the last three months there’ve been rebels surrendering in very big numbers.
At times when they surrender you find that they come with their guns and in their magazines there are no ammunition, there are no bullets, Then those are the indicators that really they cannot fight longer because they don’t have the means of making war.
SARA: This is Lieutenant Muwa’s family home. When he was growing up there was no risk of abduction by the LRA but the rebels are now in control of this area and the local children are in danger.
LIEUTENANT ISAAC MUWA: These people are abducting children because they want to use them as human shields –and just as human shields -- that is it.
If they are a political wing they should have talked to the people, the people would understand the suffering which they are in, then they willingly come out and join hands with the rebels and they fight.
SARA: The war has forced more than eight hundred thousand from their homes in Northern Uganda. Local families have been reduced to this - lining up for food aid.
This is fertile land, but people can’t even work their fields because of the risk of attack.
Neither the war not its victims can be sustained without outside help. These people are reliant on food aid just to survive. As for the rebels, they’ve been armed by the Government of Sudan to the north, and as long as the flow of weapons and ammunition continues, so too will the conflict.
The Government claims some diplomatic progress with Sudan, but it hasn’t made life any easier for these people.
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: We have been having discussion with the Sudan Government. They seem to have reduced, if not completely eliminated, their support for these terrorists.
Music
SARA: Yet in recent months the abductions and killings have increased. More than eighty per cent of the people in this region have been herded into camps. It’s a government idea to increase security, but it hasn’t stopped the violence and it’s left the people here living in poverty.
ARCHBISHOP ODOMA: It’s a question of truth and sincerity on the side of Government to admit some failures in protecting the children, because the more it continues these children are being abducted, the more it is pointing to the inability of the Government to protect these people.
SARA: What if you can’t find a military solution to this problem?
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: There will be a military solution.
SARA: How do you know that?
PRESIDENT MUSEVENI: Because we have had military solutions in the past.
Music
SARA: The people of Northern Uganda, and the war which has ruined thousands of lives, have largely been ignored by the outside world. But fourteen year old David can’t escape the memories of being forced to kill.
DAVID: When I go to sleep, I keep thinking about it and her spirit keeps echoing in my mind. Hit quickly, hit quickly, so we can run away... and at times I just jump out of my sleep.
SARA: This gruesome conflict has left a scar that runs across the generations. Thousands of children have become killers. And thousands more remain at risk.