{UAH} IDDI AMIN NEVER TARGETED LANGIs/ACHOLIs, THEY TARGETED HIM {---Series forty-five}

Friends

 

Under this series what we have decided to do is to post  a part of the study that was made by Meredeth Turshen, called "The Political Economy of Violence  against Women during Armed Conflict in Uganda" So what this lady did was to follow UNLA and how they behaved but treated women in Luwero, and how LRA treated women in Acholi during the Kony war. On record the people that were fighting Museveni under Konny were largely Acholi. Read these reports and interviews to realize the similarities between the behaviors of Acholi soldiers in Luwero war and how they behaved when fighting Museveni under Konny. So this study goes back and forth between The Luwero and Konny war.  Here is what is frightening, the women they treated this way in Acholi land, were their very own fellow Acholi women. I beseeched thee as Ugandans to start discussing Acholi violence but candidly. And do you know why? Because it has already gained an international attention. It is Ugandans that are still living in denial. Again as I have always requested your good hearts, put a face on these women by thinking that this is your wife sister or daughter making these reports that we, are today being threatened for making public.

 

We are starting from the middle of page 808.

 

"…………Rape as a Weapon of War

A number of authors (e.g., Rhonda Copelon, Cynthia Enloe,

Radhika Coomaraswamy) usefully describe different kinds of rape

and men's motivation to rape. Enloe (2000, 109) describes rape

of women held in military prisons by male soldiers serving as

guards, rape by a group of invading soldiers to force women of a

different ethnicity or race to flee their home regions, and rape of

captured women by soldiers of one communal or national group

aimed at humiliating the men of an opposing group. I agree with

Enloe (2000, 110) that militarized rape is a distincdy different act

because it is perpetrated in a context of institutional policies and

decisions. Militarized rape is direcdy related to the functions of a

formal institution such as the state's national security or defense

apparatus or an insurgency's military arm. In this context, what

propels individual soldiers to rape (both psychological motivation

and material incentives) is less important than what leads military

commanders to promote rape by their forces.

The cultural significance of raping "enemy" women—^women

of a different race, ethnicity, religion, or political affiliation—is

prominent in analyses of rape in sectarian conflicts: "ethnic

cleansing rape as practiced in Bosnia has some aspects particularly

designed to drive women from their homes or destroy their

possibility of reproducing within and 'for' their community"

(Copelon, 1995, 205). Copelon is saying that, implicitly or explicitly,

military forces organize rape as a means of both intimidating

and dispossessing their enemies. We can take this analysis of cultural

significance, which rightly decries the instrumental use of

women in the struggle for power, one step further and recognize

that combatants mobilize ethnic, national or religious sectarianism

as justification for such extra-legal activity as asset transfers.

When combatants abduct women in the same way they commandeer

non-human objects (regarding both as loot or war booty),

their actions go beyond the use of rape to intimidate the enemy.

They treat women as assets in part because they can put women

to work to create additional resources. Duffield (1994, 52) suggests

that the more direct or coercive the transfer of assets, the

more likely is sectarianism to be mobilized as justification.

Ugandan women understand rape as a weapon of war. Sabina,

the woman mentioned above who was abducted by members of

the Holy Spirit movement, said the worst thing about the soldiers

of the National Resistance Army was that they forced women to

have sex with them one after the other.

 

The DA [District Administrator] claimed that it was the

women who were encouraging the killings, spreading the

AIDS virus and enc9uraging the rebels to reach Gulu town

because they knew them all. He felt that all who had taken

refuge in the town should be forced to go back home [saying]

, 'the rebels are your sons and why should you run away

from your bad products?' He also said that women should

avoid getting contaminated with the AIDS virus. This

annoyed me and I asked him, 'How do we avoid getting

infected with the AIDS virus? According to me it is the government

which is intentionally spreading the AIDS virus by

raping women when they go for firewood. Is raping one of

the government weapons to fight the women? All these sufferings

are being inflicted upon us because of our children's

misbehaviour... The DA asked me to prove if [the

gang rape] was done by government soldiers. And I told

him it was true because I saw a helicopter bring them food;

the rebels never owned a helicopter! (Bennett, Bexley and

Warnock, 1995, 99)

 

The unpredictability of rape serves to terrorize the community

and warn all people of the futility of resistance—those targeted as

victims as well as those who might wish to protect the intended

targets. The LRA considered rape, along with killing and torture,

"a tactic of warfare, a means of intimidation and control over the

population" (Amnesty International, 1997, 20). Behind the cultural

significance of raping "enemy" women lies the institutionalization

of attitudes and practices that regard and treat women as

property. Consider these customs as examples: some societies

require grooms to pay for brides, compensating the wife's family

for the loss of their daughter's productive and reproductive labor

value; some societies recognize only male heads of household and

give men exclusive control of the family's assets, including control

of wives' labor and the products of that labor; and some societies

encode (in customary or statutory law) women's lifelong status as

minors under the guardianship of fathers, husbands, brothers or

sons.

 

Women as Property, Women and Property

That Ugandan soldiers regard women as property is illustrated

by the following report from the Luwero Triangle (an area in the

center of the country comprising the districts of Luwero, Mpigi

and Mubende from which Museveni launched his drive for power,

and where the war between Obote's troops and Museveni's guerrillas

was most intense). An Obote government soldier abducted

a 14-year-old girl and took her to his base where he repeatedly

raped her. When he was transferred, he sold her for one thousand

Ugandan shillings (about one U.S. dollar) to another soldier; this

soldier sold her again for the same amount when he was transferred

(ISIS-WICCE, 1998, 31).3 This next incident also occurred

during the war in the Luwero Triangle:

 

G and her twelve-year-old classmate had been taken from

their school by two [government] soldiers who, laughing

and joking between themselves, had slit open the girls' vaginas

with their pangas [machetes] and had raped them on

the open ground outside the school...G survived, and was

taken after several weeks, by the soldier who had raped her,

to be his 'wife', when he was stationed in the north of

Uganda. She had stayed there for the remainder of the war

and had been forced to act as a wife: preparing food, cleaning,

working on the land and having sex when it was

demanded (Giller, 1998, 140).

 

Soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army also treat women as

chattel, and men have the power to transfer "their" women to

other "husbands"; these "imposed relationships are precarious...

women may pass through several men" (Amnesty International,

1997, 18). Human Rights Watch (1997, 24) reports

frequent, though unconfirmed, allegations that during the rebellions

of the Holy Spirit Movement and Lord's Resistance Army,

some Ugandan girls and boys were sold as slaves to the Sudanese

in exchange for guns and food.

The abduction of women and girls to serve as porters, nurses,

cooks, farmers, cleaners, launderers, tailors, and sex workers is

perhaps the crudest form of asset transfer in civil war; in this case,

the assets are women's productive labor.^

Girls and women [abducted by the LRA] are forced to carry

out the range of domestic duties that in rural Acholi society

might be expected of a wife. These include cooking, cleaning,

and fetching water and food. If the LRA rules are not

followed, the head of the [military] family has the power to

punish, often carried out by caning, the number of strokes

reflecting the severity of the offence...Forced marriage

means that girls are also forced to provide sexual services to

their "husbands". They are effectively held as sexual slaves

(Amnesty International, 1997, 17).

Susan was sixteen years old:

 

I spent three months in Uganda and three months in

Sudan with the rebels. In Uganda, we were made to do a lot

of hard work—getting rice, pounding rice, hulling rice,

stealing food, and gathering wild leaves and preparing food

(Human Rights Watch, 1997, 23).

 

The LRA abducted 15-year-old R in 1996 and kept him for

seven months:

 

In the morning, after waking up, we will move until midday.

Then we will cook. Then we will move again until sunset.

Sometimes we will move all day without having food.

They made you carry heavy luggage. If you could not carry

the luggage, they'll kill you (Amnesty International, 1997,

24).

 

In general, the LRA observed traditional gender roles: they

trained most boys to use weapons and flght, most girls to serve as

domestics. But some boys also worked as farmers and porters and

some girls became soldiers.

In guerrilla warfare soldiers live off the land, and women's agricultural

labor is a critical asset. All farmwork is manual in the

absence of mechanization, and people must transport everything

on their heads. Ugandan women do 80% of the farmwork; it is

their labor that raises the taxes (in money or kind) regularly collected

by armed forces in areas they control.

 

M was forty-two when the soldiers entered her village [in

the Luwero Triangle]... Despite her and her husband's plea

for mercy, several soldiers raped M and her flfteen-year-old

daughter on the mud floor of the room while her husband

and the rest of the family were forced to watch and clap....M

and her daughter had to work for the soldiers, gathering all

the food from the shambas [farm plots]. The soldiers stole

everything (Giller, 1998, 139-140).

 

When the Lord's Resistance Army needed food, it obtained

rations by enforcing contributions from villagers terrorized into

acquiescence, or by looting.

Soldiers can also alienate women's productive labor by denying

the enemy the beneflt of women's work. They can accomplish this

by amputating limbs. Fifteen-year-old Patricia said,

 

"They would make us cut people's legs off' (Human Rights Watch, 1997, 23).

A 15-year-old student from St. Mary's College^ wrote that in her

Kitgum village she had seen people whose mouth and ears were

cut and people whose hands and legs were cut off by the rebels

(Human Rights Watch, 1997, 94).

 

Combatants may use violence to alienate women's reproductive

as well as productive labor in civil war. There are two aspects of

reproductive labor to consider: rape to impregnate, making

women bear children for the "enemy" community, and rape to

prevent women from becoming mothers in their own community,

by making them unacceptable to their community or by injuring

them physically so that they are unable to bear children. Under

customary law in many societies, the inability to bear sons jeopardizes

a woman's land rights. Because rape deprives women (and

their kin groups) of control over their bodies, it is by nature a

property crime.

 

The relationship between the theft of property and violence

against women is complex because most African women do not

own property outright. During the second regime of Milton

Obote (1980-1985), government forces punished the population

in the Luwero Triangle that supported Museveni's National Resistance

Army (NRA). In a study of women's experiences in armed

conflict in this period, ISIS-WICCE (1998, 26), an international

non-governmental organization based in Uganda, found that

97% of respondents reported having their household property

looted and/or destroyed:

 

Iron sheets were removed from the roofs of houses...household

property was looted as well as animals such as cows,

goats, chicken and pigs. Harvested coffee, maize and other

crops were taken or burnt.

 

Women were forced to carry the loot to the government military

bases. A woman in a discussion group in Mukulubita that met

ten years later to discuss the war said.

 

The moment [the government forces] entered one's house,

they could do thorough checking. Those who had interest

in women could do the raping while their husbands and

fathers would be looking on. The government soldiers were

mosdy fond of women, chicken, cows and other material

things like clothes and mattresses. The girls would be taken

as wives (ISIS-WICCE, 1998, 24).

 

Rape is sometimes the violent accompaniment to the forcible

extortion of resources. D. described her experience in a 1996

LRA attack:

 

I was sitting in my home with my six-month-old baby. The

rebels arrived. They picked the baby from me and threw

him on the ground. He survived. My husband is a civil servant.

He was there along with a man who had come to buygroundnuts.

The rebels started beating them. They killed

my husband. They did not kill the buyer, but he is now mentally

deranged. Then they started raping me. My daughter

was seven years old. They burnt her with fire, tortured her

and asked her where my husband had put government

property. I was also beaten on the head and lost my teeth

(Amnesty International, 1997, 26).

 

Protecting Women in Conflict and the Aflermath

The examples of women treated as property illustrate the

underlying gender biases that make women vulnerable during

conflict and in the aftermath. Rape exacerbates women's vulnerability

because of the many social and cultural issues related to

women's "cleanliness" and "good behavior." Ugandans regard

non-marital sex as abhorrent; families and future husbands reject

women and girls who have been sexual slaves to soldiers. On

returning to their communities the women experienced shame

and humiliation; some were taunted by men who said they were

"used products that have lost their taste" (Human Rights Watch,

1997, 46). A study conducted in early 1997 of 36 married women

raped by LRA or government soldiers found that 30 had been

rejected by their husbands or husbands' relatives; three had not

been chased away but their husbands no longer supported them

and expressed fear that they carried the HIV virus (Amnesty

International, 1997, 32). The AIDS epidemic has made women in

polygamous households equally rejecting of co-wives who have

been raped, as in the report by M. L. from Omel Kuru, cited at

the beginning of this article.

When marriage and motherhood define women's lives, divorce

leads to economic deprivation. Many Ugandan customary laws

discriminate against women in the areas of divorce and devolution

of property on death. In most areas in the country, women

may not own or inherit property, nor may they have custody of

their children under local customary law. Ugandan society stigmatizes

single women with children as prostitutes. In extreme situations,

this accusation becomes reality because many destitute,

socially ostracized women do turn to commercial sex work to feed

themselves and their children. In this context, the economic and

political consequences of violence are dramatic: surviving rape

and bearing the rapist's child means loss of family, community

and livelihood. Women have strong incentives to mask or hide

their experiences of sexual assault, if they can. A student from St.

Mary's College wrote.

 

When our school closed for a while after the abduction, the

majority of the students, including me, tried [to attend] various

schools country-wide, but the life and the atmosphere

in these schools was not conducive. We were nick-named by

our fellow students as "Kony Rebels" and many teachers

and school administrators suspected us [of being] HIV+,

and wherever we were, we were afraid of identifying ourselves

as students of St. Mary's College, Aboke, or else they

would try to isolate us. Teachers in these schools asked us to

be tested for venereal disease. We did not know why such

was suspected of us...It was recendy that we found out why

were being suspected as AIDS victims. It was following the

abduction, when rumors spread that all the students of the

school were raped by the rebels. I am kindly appealing to

you, the members of Human Rights Watch, that the information

[that all of the] students [were] raped was false.

None of us [was] raped except two girls, and those who did

it were killed by their commanders (Human Rights Watch,

1997,95).

 

Concepts of virtue and family honor objectify women, as does

the need to protect a woman's chastity or virginity for the reputation

of her family in a community and for the successful arrangement

of a girl's marriage. The premise that women have property

 

in themselves, an interpretation of human rights promoted by

women's rights activists, is an idea alien to most customary and

colonial legal codes in Africa. Those codes do not acknowledge

women's individual rights as their inalienable property or recognize

that such rights provide structure to women's interpersonal

interactions in communal life. This discrimination is changing: in

recent years. South African courts, for example, have interpreted

individual rights to include, among other things, women's control

of their own body, which includes the right not to be bartered,

traded, or sold like chattel, as well as the right to have one's bodily

integrity respected, free from unwanted battery and rape.

The underlying gender biases that existed in society prior to

the confiict and are exacerbated by violent confiict have important

policy implications. Recognizing the practice of treating

women as property makes it possible to explain a widely observed

paradoxical phenomenon: on the one hand, communities will

fight to protect their women, and families see rape as so awful that

in some cases the family's honor can be restored only by killing

the woman who was raped; and on the other hand, rape was, until

very recently, invisible in national and international courts and

the law afforded little legal redress for this crime. In Uganda,

apart from a general law on assault, there are no laws to protect

battered women, and violence against women, including rape,

remains common (U.S. Department of State, 1997,10). Public

opinion and law enforcement officials continue to view wife beating

as a man's prerogative and rarely intervene in cases of domestic

violence. Child abuse remains a serious problem, particularly

the rape of young girls (U.S. Department of State, 1997,11).

The political rehabilitation of women in the aftermath of confiict

involves reestablishing women's standing in their communities, as

community status is the first instance of women's citizenship. This

entails the end of discrimination, the promotion of women's rights,

and the reform of outdated and discriminatory laws. Ugandan

women are working on all of these issues, and Parliament was considering

a Domestic Relations Bill and a Domestic Violence Bill in1999. The UN Secretary-General has called for ratification of the

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination

against Women without reservations, and the equalization of laws

for men and women, particularly those relating to property, inheritance

and divorce (United Nations, 1998, 21)…………………….."

 

Stay in the forum for Series forty-six on the way   ------>

 

EM

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"