Misplaced Pages

Lord's Resistance Army insurgency: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 06:04, 16 November 2004 editZayZayEM (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers12,949 editsNo edit summary← Previous edit Revision as of 21:04, 18 November 2004 edit undoRenamed user ixgysjijel (talk | contribs)27,236 edits added external links, put reports in chronological order, moved links without date to bottom of External LinksNext edit →
Line 11: Line 11:
==External links== ==External links==


* PDF of the by Robert Gersony for the US Embassy, March 1997. The first analysis of the two major insurgencies then occurring in the North.
* , a report by , September 1997
*. COPE Working Paper No. 33, 2000.
* An issue of has a number of Ugandan contributors, 2002
* by Human Rights Watch, March 2003
* *
* , January 2004
* by the of , Uganda, February 2004


* http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/lra.htm * http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/lra.htm
* http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAFR590011997 * http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAFR590011997
* (News and news archive on the Lord's Resistance Army) * (News and news archive on the Lord's Resistance Army]
*
* is an organization created by the Catholic, Protestant and Muslim leadership in the conflict-affected region.






Revision as of 21:04, 18 November 2004

The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is a rebel group based in north Uganda which was formed in 1987. It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself a prophet and apparently wishes to establish a state based on his unique interpretation of the Biblical Ten Commandments. The rebels have been accused of many atrocities in the area, including kidnapping children to train as soldiers or use as sex slaves. The group draws its members primarily from the Acholi people, but it lacks widespread support among the Acholis, who have also been the victims of many of its tactics. Atrocities have been reported in the area around the towns of Kitgum, Gulu, and Lira. The Ugandan government blamed the LRA for a massacre of over 200 civilians at a refugee camp in Barlonyo near Lira on February 21, 2004.

The Ugandan army has struggled to defend many towns and villages from LRA attacks, and the Government has now started to foster and arm Acholi militias against the LRA. On February 25, 2004, street protests and riots, apparently protesting the government's failure to adequately protect civilians, caused at least nine deaths. The violence seems to have been motivated to some degree by animosity towards the Acholi, who many collectively blame for the rebellion. At the same time, the army announced it had killed 21 LRA members in battle. Some observers fear that the introduction of more weapons in north Uganda will create more problems in the longer term.

It is estimated that nearly 9000 children were abducted by the LRA between June 2002 and May 2003, and fear of continuing LRA attacks and abductions created a widespread refugee problem. Thousands of families had to leave their towns and villages for the safety of larger settlements, where they slept on street corners and open spaces. Despite these nocturnal and longer term migrations, the plight of the Acholi people received little media coverage in the developed world, prior to November 2003, nor was the subject discussed by the United Nations.

The LRA and their impact on the people of North Uganda was the subject of Unreported World, a television documentary broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on 14 November 2003.

In December 2003, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni referred the case to the International Criminal Court and ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo started investigation.

External links


Category: