Speaker 1:

The Lords Resistance Army come to St. Mary's College in Aboke, at 2:00 in the morning.

Rachele:

Knocked at my window and he said, "Sister the rebels are here."

Speaker 1:

Sister Rachele a deputy principle was woken by the night watch.

Rachele:

So I called Alba we come at that corner and we checked there. The whole gate was illuming like daylight, all the torches were there.

Speaker 1:

150 girls were sleeping [crosstalk 00:00:40].

Rachele:

There we had to make a grave decision. We said, "Are we going to face the rebels or are we going to too hide?" Because if they are there, they want the girls. If we go there, they will oblige just to open the dormitory. So we decided to hide and to pray and hope that the steel doors, that are there in the dormitory will hold.

Speaker 3:

They started flushing us with torches, telling us to come out. "You come out. You come out of the dormitory."

Speaker 4:

Me I went and hid, all of us went and hid. Then they bang the bed to deceive us that we're going to kill you if don't open the door.

Speaker 5:

So the rebels managed to terrorise the girls into letting them into that dormitory there, but this next one along, it wasn't so easy. The girls refused to let them in and it was extremely hard tod break in. These heavy steel doors, resisted all attempts to bash them down and the windows were almost as difficult. They were much bigger in those days. You can see here where they've been ripped up since.

But they had heavy steel bars across them, so what the rebels had to do is they chiselled through the brick work all the way around this window. They lifted the entire thing out, they climbed up the bars and in through the gap there, it took him several hours, but eventually they had another 70 girls completely at their mercy.

Rachele:

When we realised that, after when the rebels had gone and the first day light came, we saw that big hole in the wall. The girls were all taken from the four dormitory, for me a strength came inside of me that I asked, one of the teachers was there to help me to come with me. And I told him, "Busko would you be so kind to come with me," said, "Sister let us go to die for our girls." And we started following the same route the rebels were following. They were about two hours ahead of us.

Speaker 1:

It was an extraordinary courage. The LRA are killers. In a few hours, sister Rachele caught up with them. She started to beg the commander to release her girls.

Rachele:

I kept pleading with him. Like we're talking now, because he was kind to me. He never harassed me. We were talking like this. He gave me his name. He told me his name was Mariano Ocaya. I told him my name, so we were discussing. Then when I pleaded for the children and he kept on saying, "Don't worry, I will give you the girls." but then after sometimes he shook his head like that and he said then ... Then he wrote on the ground he said, "The girls are 139. I will give you a 109, I keep 30." He said. I knelt in front of him and I said, "Please Mariano give me all the girls." He said, "No." I had to ... So.

Speaker 1:

The 30 girls from Aboke school join the thousands of children who'd been abducted by the LRA in the last 10 years. Most were taken for so called training at camps in Sudan. These are some of the lucky ones who've managed to escape. Ugandan army sends them to a reception centre in the town of Gulu run by World Vision and largely financed by UNICEF.

Kathleen:

It feels like a job not fully completed and it's a personal disappointment that we haven't seen a large number of children return. Okay. And what time is that?

Speaker 1:

UNICEF Representative Kathleen Cravero is leaving Uganda, from this office in Kampala. She's conducted a four year campaign to alert the world to the horror of the LRA war against children.

Kathleen:

To take the children of a community, has the same and even more devastating sort of effect is raping the women of a community. It's demonstrating that that community is powerless and there is no line beyond which the terror will not go. That's one aspect of it. The second is that the LRA actually uses these children. They use them as beasts of burden. They use them as sexual slaves and so called wives, rewards to commanders and they use them as cannon fodder.

Speaker 1:

The other side of Gulu from World Vision compound, is a second GUSKO run by a local NGO. And another 200 children who have escapade from LRA. GUSKO encourages the kids to dance, it is a form of therapy. They need reminding they're other things in life than pain and hunger and brutal killings.Many of these young people have spent years with the LRA, even the youngest of them like 10-year-old Francis, will tell you a stories to chill your blood.

Francis:

They ordered me to stab a woman three times. If she didn't die I will be shot myself. So I stab her three times other bashed her. Other children, more used to killing, came and took times stabbing her. First one will stab her, then another will take his place. We left her dead holding her baby.

Speaker 1:

Francis was nine when he was abducted. His friend Daniel was 10. He still finds it hard to talk about the day that they took him away?

Daniel:

My mother was digging in the compound on that fateful day. They said, "Don't you know you shouldn't work on Fridays?" Then they dragged me from the house and made me watch as they killed my mother.

Francis:

When one of us tried to escape, to run away, five others were ordered to kill him, One of them grabbed a spear and began stabbing him. Others took big stones and dropped them on his chest. And then they used pick axe handles to smash his head.

Speaker 1:

GUSCO has found that getting the children to reenact the abductions, the beatings, the forced matches helps some of them to come to terms with their terrible memories. To remind them that what they've done, they were forced to do. But hardest to help are those who did the enforcing.

James:

If I don't get help I will go mad. Sometimes I feel like killing again, the way they trained me to do. That's when I sit on my own.

Speaker 1:

James was adopted when he was 18, soon after he was made an LRA commander.

James:

My job was to abduct people. Anyone who tried to escape I killed. If they tried to run, I shot them. That's what I did.

Speaker 5:

How many people do you think you've killed altogether in the last three or four years?

James:

I reckon with respect to killing people. I remember killing a 120 people.

Speaker 5:

Did the LRA tell you what you were fighting for?

James:

They told us we had to overthrow the government. To chuck Museveni out of power. That's what came out of their mouths.

Speaker 1:

Yoweri Museveni has been president of Uganda for over a decade. The guerrilla army which he formed in the bush. T0 fight the murderous regime of Dr. Milton Obote is now the Ugandan People's defence force. Unlike all previous Ugandan armies, it proved to be relatively disciplined and lower value as is Museveni himself. For most Ugandans, he's the best thing that's happened to that country since independence.

But the northern district of Gulu and Kitgum a home to the Acoli people, who provided the backbone of Milton Obote army. The war in the north started as a tribal rebellion against the southern usurper, but then it was hijacked by a demented fanatic called Joseph Kony, who claims direct communion with the Holy Spirit. The population has been forced to flee the countryside and crowd into temporary township like Taba 30 kilometres outside Gulu.

Speaker 5:

Do you think there's any support left amongst the Acoli people for the Lord's Resistance Army?

Speaker 10:

No, there is no support. There is no support.

Speaker 5:

Because they say they're fighting for Acoli.

Speaker 10:

They are fighting for no cause actually, as far as I know. They are fighting for no cause.

Kathleen:

If you look at LRA has no coherent political agenda. When you ask what does the LRA want, they want to destroy the current government of Uganda and rule Uganda by the 10 commandments. That's about as far as they've gone.

Speaker 1:

Throughout Acoli land, villages are deserted, fields abandoned. Joseph Kony qulied and meaningless little war, has inflicted a decade of fear and poverty on the very people he claims to be championing.

Speaker 5:

There's no doubt he would've been defeated long ago if it weren't for the fact that he himself is a pond, in a much bigger war that's being fought 150 kilometres north up this road across the border with Sudan.

Speaker 1:

For 20 years, the Black Christian tribes of southern Sudan have been fighting for autonomy from the Arab Islamic government in the north. The Khartoum government claims that Uganda is supporting the southern rebels, the SPLA. So it arms, supplies and give shelter to the Lord's Resistance Army in a gruesome tit for tat. It was the SPLA in fact, who rescued Grace Akallo from a Sudanese camp. She was one of the 30 abducted from Aboke school, so far, only nine have come back.

Grace Akallo:

I thought maybe I was going to die there, because there was no way of escaping. If you escape from Sudan the Arabs can catch you and take you back to Kony and they kill you.

Speaker 1:

The death rate in the LRA camps in Sudan from thirst, hunger disease and brutality is appalling.

Grace Akallo:

And if you escape again they Dinka [crosstalk 00:12:32]. So people can die even under a certain tree. You can go to look for water, but you die.

Speaker 1:

Every month the parents with the schools stolen girls meet at Aboke.

Speaker 12:

Right now as we speak children ar still being abducted, abduction is still continuing especially in that part of Kitgum, in Aboke county. Abduction is continuing as we talk now. They're saying they're fully committed for whatever the concern parents association is doing and they rally behind our chairman and they will struggle with us together to see that our objectives are achieved. It's sad-

Speaker 1:

For years the parents of adopted children in the north were reluctant to protest for fear of LRA retaliation. But the Aboke parents are not Acoli peasants from the local villages. They're articulate middle class people from all over Uganda. Isabella is a teacher in Kampala, her daughter is in the camps in Sudan.

Isabella:

We said, "No, we cannot keep quiet about over our daughters." Why should we keep quiet? Let us keep on yelling until the whole world come to assist us if possible.

Speaker 1:

The parents have formed themselves into an effective lobby group. Their representatives have travelled to Sudan and even to the UN in New York. They are calling on the world to pressure Sudan to stop supporting the LRA and they want their own government to sit down and talk to Joseph Kony.

Speaker 14:

He's a very unpredictable man. But because we parents are desperate, we want to try, because he has our children. What other ways can we get our children away from his grip? That is why we want to try a negotiation.

Speaker 5:

Do you still believe then-

Speaker 1:

But president Museveni insists that he's army can still defeat the LRA.

Museveni:

Oh it's possible. It's possible. We-

Speaker 5:

But you're not going to negotiate with Joseph Kony?

Museveni:

We cannot negotiate about ... our constitution doesn't allow us to negotiate about power sharing with bandits because the constitution says how you can gain office. You go and stand in the constituency or in a local government area. So we cannot really negotiate with them on that. But we can give them amnesty. So that they come out-

Speaker 5:

Have you done that?

Museveni:

Yes, we have done it in the past and we can do it again.

Speaker 5:

Are you going to do it again?

Museveni:

We may do it again, but even for them to accept amnesty, they need a military stick. The military stick is inevitable.

Speaker 1:

And so the war in the north grinds on. But few observers up here, have the faith in his soldiers that the president seems to have. The rag tag companies that are fighting the rebels in the north are a far cry from the speak and span battalions, we saw operating in the south. Sing patriotic songs, though they might ... They're plainly incapable of protecting the population, let alone of defeating the rebels.

We travelled one day with World Vision truck a long the dangerous road from Gulu to Kitgum. This is the heart of rebel territory. World Vision had been promised an army escort, but it never appeared. Their cargo was precious two dozen escapees from the LRA. World Vision [inaudible 00:16:07] by way of post trauma therapy. Now, they were going back to their family, but not to safety.

Kitgum is smaller than Gulu. Closer to the Sudanese boarder, much more vulnerable to LRA raids. A World Vision worker accompanied a 10-year-old Patrick to his home on the outskirts of the town. Patrick had been abducted only weeks before, but his family could not believe he returned to them a live. So many, have not.

Speaker 16:

We didn't have any hope or way to get him back. We just left it to God. To see the child back safe and sound, we are so happy.

Speaker 1:

But even here in Kitgum town there's no guarantee that Patrick would be safe. That was graphically demonstrated on the very day we took him home. Just down the track, we heard the sounds of walling. The dead man name was Solomon Nang. He had been killed hours earlier in the small hours of the morning by LRA raiding party. They left him beated and stabbed to death at the edge of the town and took away three adults and three more children.

Kathleen:

What is happening to children in Uganda is a crime against humanity and the longer that any group anywhere in the world can get away with this brutality. It diminishes all of us.

Rachele:

I don't know why they are doing these things, but we are praying that God may bring out the goodness that I'm sure is still present in them, to make them realise they're wrong, that they're doing. And let them release, not only our girls, but all the children. Please let the children come home. You can do that. Let the children come home.