LRA and military in rights violation

The Ugandan military and rebel Lord's Resistance Army continue to kill, rape and uproot civilians in northern Uganda with brazen impunity, Human Rights Watch said in the report.
Following the appeal, the ICC has since expanded the scope of its enquiry to cover the situation in northern Uganda more generally, including serious crimes committed by Ugandan government forces.
"The government remains responsible for many of the hardships and abuses endured by the displaced population" said Jereme Rone, a Human Rights Watch Researcher on Uganda, a day prior to the release of the report.
The 76 page report, "Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights abuse in Northern Uganda", documents how the ongoing lack of accountability and civilian protection in the north has fuelled atrocities by both sides.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Ugandan government has since 1996 used the army to undertake a massive forced displacement of the population in the north and imposed severe restrictions on freedom of movement.
Rone said that while justifying the displacements on grounds of security, the Museveni government has forcibly displaced people without a lawful basis under international law and then failed to provide the promised security.
Many of those displaced in the war, now in its19th year, including almost the entire population of the three Acholi districts live in squalid conditions in displaced persons camps that are susceptible to LRA attacks.
Rone said that evidence on the ground is of "a Ugandan military, oiled by over the officially stated 22 per cent of Uganda's budget allocation and mostly from donor money, that has repeatedly failed to protect these camps", compounding the harm inflicted by the original forced displacement.
Instead, said the report, people who are forced by extreme necessity to travel outside to farm, hunt and gather firewood or water, are either raped by the very army meant to protect them if they happen to be women and girls and beaten and detained if men and boys.
And those displaced persons who must leave the camp confines may be greeted on their return by undisciplined soldiers who beat them for coming back past curfew hour or other minor infractions.
The report charge that the government has failed to meaningfully prosecute military personnel responsible for abuses or otherwise discipline its forces in the north.
The report says that these forces have committed deliberate killings, routine beatings, rapes and prolonged arbitrary detentions of civilians to such an extent that there is extreme resentment against their presence.
Most complaints of army abuse result in no action. Even when action is taken, it is usually transfer of the offending soldier or unit, the dispersal of a small sum of money for "medical costs," or the beating of the soldier in the barracks.
Human Rights Watch found that the 11th Battalion of the UPDF based in Cwero and Awach camps of Gulu district committed numerous deliberate killings and beatings of civilians during the months in 2005 when it was assigned to those camps; it was transferred out of the area after numerous international complaints.
The rights group says that the current protection and accountability structures within the camps and within the army are grossly inadequate-charges the Ugandan government denies.
The importance of army discipline is even greater, says Human rights Watch, because in most displaced persons camps the army post is the only government presence-aside from local councillors who are often intimidated by the army.
Police are far too few to address the widespread criminal acts committed by UPDF soldiers (and civilians) in the more than eighty displaced persons camps of northern Uganda.
The Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC), a government body, is almost entirely absent from northern Uganda, with only four of its one hundred officers placed there.
While increased police and UHRC presence could provide other avenues of redress for the population against government army abuses, these organisations would need the consistent backing of higher authorities, up to President Museveni, to affirm their mandates to investigate and prosecute soldiers in the northern "war zone."
The rights watch calls on the international community and the Ugandan government to act now to radically overhaul the protection and accountability structures in the north to ensure that, in peace or war, the continuing suffering of the people of northern Uganda is alleviated.
A brutal rebel group responsible for countless atrocities, the LRA continues to wage war against the Ugandan government.
Various estimates show up to 1.9 million displaced civilians in northern Uganda remain isolated, ignored and unprotected, vulnerable to abuses by both rebel and army forces.
In each of the displaced persons camps visited, HRW found cases of abuse by both Ugandan government forces as well as rebel combatants.
In recent years, the rebel LRA has committed atrocious crimes against the civilian population in northern Uganda.
These crimes include torture and mutilation, abduction, sexual violence forced recruitment and killing of people it considers supporters of the government.
"Children have been the primary victims of rebel abuses, although adults have not been spared", said Rone.
HRW called for meaningful national prosecutions, which would be a valuable supplement to the ICC investigation.
The ICC referral, the first ever by a state party to the ICC treaty, has however not generally been well received by the leadership of some communities in northern Uganda.
Many traditional, civic and religious leaders as well as civil society groups in northern Uganda have opposed the ICC investigation on the grounds that it undermines the peace process and will lead to increased violence against civilians.
They have instead advocated amnesty for all members of the LRA, including the top leaders who would be the individuals the ICC would most likely investigate and prosecute.
Opposition to the ICC also stems from the perception among many northerners that it will only investigate the LRA and not government forces despite the UPDF’s long record of abuses.
The report blames the ICC for such perceptions: it has failed to undertake an effective outreach strategy to actively engage civil society and the general population in northern Uganda to explain its mandate and the scope of its enquiry.
According to Rone, the ICC has so far the failed to effectively communicate its mandate to the people of northern Uganda and in the process undermining the court's credibility and impartiality in the eyes of many there.
Despite its shortcomings, however, Human rights watch say, the ICC remains the best option for achieving some measure of justice and ending impunity for the people of northern Uganda.