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

Friends

 

Filda Ayet had a problem, you see she was abducted at age ten and the man that her fellow Acholi instructed her to sleep with was too big for her to accommodate. Filda Ayet felt a lot of pain because the man was simply too big for her. Now the same Filda has a separate story as well, in as much as she had a problem sleeping with a huge man, she was told to put a baby in a large pounding mortar and kill it. And note, this is an Acholi baby as Filda herself. Her Acholi commander handed her a large wooden pestle used for pounding grain, She felt so bad when she was given the order, she was terrified because she knew if she did not follow order she would be killed. She pounded it to death. Friends we are talking about age ten here. What else happened in this region that we do not know yet but how do we live with Filda forward? Richard Lough and Euan Denholm  did the report for Amnesty International

 

Ugandans we need to  discuss Acholi violence but candidly.

 

Violence against women in Northern Uganda

by Richard Lough and Euan Denholm

Index: AFR 59/001/2005

Date: 17/07/2005

 

"When we were given to our husbands we were expected to have sex with them. I was only

10 years old when I was handed over. For days after I was sexually abused. The first time I

felt a lot of pain because he was too big. He told me he was nearly forty years old. I felt so

bad because I was still young, but I had to accept to sleep with him. I was afraid that if I

refused he would carry out his threat to kill me. I had no love for that man."

 

Filda Ayet was ten years old when the Lord's Resistance Army abducted her from her home

in Pabbo's Camp for internally displaced people, 24 kilometres from the town of Gulu in

northern Uganda. She spent over four years in captivity before finally escaping in February

2005.

In Uganda's north, Philda's story is all too familiar. The LRA has abducted thousands of

women and girls over the course of a nineteen-year conflict that has brutalized the country's

Acholi and Lango communities.

Girls as young as 8 years old have been taken into the bush where they are indoctrinated into

the ways of Joseph Kony – the LRA's leader and self-proclaimed prophet. Girls are used as

domestic slaves, raped and assigned as "wives". They can be allocated from line-ups,

selected by commanders or given the chance to choose their own "husband" by picking out

his shirt from a pile on the ground.

Sexual violence against women and girls is rife in the bush. They live in fear, fall victim to

frequent beatings and face the risk of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted

diseases. At least 85% of girls who arrived at the Gulu trauma center for former LRA

abductees contracted sexually transmitted diseases during their captivity, according to the

United Nations.

The only way to avoid violence is to follow orders. Philda can not forget the day her

commander told her he had a special job for her to complete:

 

"The first time I killed was when I was sent to Lira District. I was told to put a baby in a large

pounding mortar and kill it. My commander handed me a large wooden pestle used for

pounding grain. I felt so bad when he gave me the order. I was terrified because I knew, if I

did not follow the order, I would be killed. So I did as I was told. Killing at the start was difficult,

but it became easy when I got used to it. I still have nightmares about the bad things I did in

the bush."

 

Allegations of sexual abuse in northern Uganda are not confined to within the LRA.

Uganda's army -- the Ugandan People's Defence Force -- has been accused of serious

human rights abuses against women.

"Susan" [not her real name] spoke softly; her eyes fixed on her feet as she recalled the

moment six UPDF soldiers seized her from the Awere Trading Centre in Pader district on 2

May 2005. She says she was taken to the 5th Infantry Battalion's barracks in Awere. One of

the soldiers told her she was to become his wife.

 

"There were other young girls at the barracks whilst I was there. Sometimes three or four

soldiers would sexually abuse a girl together. I never had that because the soldier wanted me

to be his wife. He said he would shoot my mother and I dead if I didn't agree. The soldiers

beat me terribly when they caught me trying to escape. I feel very bitter about it all. He should

be jailed... but, instead, they are trying to fabricate a case against me for stealing an army

uniform."

 

"Susan" now faces an anxious three-month wait before she can take a blood test to reveal

whether she's been infected with HIV. The conflict in the north of Uganda has forced 80% of the region's population to flee their

villages and seek security in camps for internally displaced people. Families have been

stripped of their wealth. Men have lost their livelihoods and with them their dignity. With the

rhythms of traditional village life broken, Acholi and Langi elders complain of a surge in

alcoholism, sexual promiscuity and rape.

Hunger and sheer desperation leave women vulnerable to exploitation. An increasing

numbers of young girls are turning to prostitution -- comparatively wealthy mobile army units

are their best paying customers. Impoverished parents now marry off their daughters as soon

as they reach their early teens, desperate to raise money to buy food and pay school fees.

Archbishop John Baptist Odama, head of the Catholic diocese in Gulu, calls it "loose living".

Women, he says, in their state of hopelessness are falling prey to sexual immorality. An

estimated 12% of the north's population is HIV positive -- twice the national average -- but

many suspect the true figure to be far higher.

In 2003, a Human Rights Watch report stated that a growing number of Ugandan women

were dying from AIDS related deaths because "the (Ugandan) state is failing to protect them

from domestic violence." For many women, domestic violence is not an isolated act. Sister

Margaret, who heads Caritas' trauma counseling service, says that wives are especially

vulnerable because husbands regard them as "property".

 

"Women, especially in rural areas, think it is acceptable for a man to be violent against her.

Some even feel that if their husbands do not beat them then it means they no longer want

them. They think beating is a sign of love. Because there is normally a dowry, husbands

believe they own their wives. But you can not buy a human being. You can not compare her

to a piece of cloth."

 

Survivors of domestic violence often do not come forward and their suffering goes unnoticed.

Uganda lacks specific laws that provide women with any meaningful protection from domestic

violence.

The Ugandan government is currently considering a draft Domestic Relations Bill. As it

stands, the new legislation would outlaw polygamy and payment of a "bride-price". Human

rights groups believe that this would go some way to rectifying the imbalance.

Editor's Note: Since this article was written, parliament has asked for more work on the Bill

and it is not expected to be passed before elections in March 2006.

This article was written by an outside contributor and does not necessarily reflect Amnesty

International policy.

 

Stay in the forum for Series ninety-three 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"