ICC jeopardising local peace efforts - northern leaders

Efforts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to bring to justice perpetrators of war crimes in Uganda's protracted northern conflict risk jeopardising the ongoing peace process, according to local leaders. The ICC recently announced plans to issue arrest warrants for the head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony, and several other high-ranking rebels, a move that was widely perceived by leaders in northern Uganda as being contrary to peace talks between the government and the rebels. "When the ICC announced in Nairobi that they were soon issuing arrest warrants to the LRA - that was the last blow to the peace process," Rwot David Acana II told a delegation of US diplomats and UN officials on Tuesday at his residence in Gulu, about 380 km north of the capital, Kampala. "Since then, the rebels have remained paranoid, believing that any meeting with them will be a trap to kill them," Acana, the recently crowned cultural leader of northern Uganda's Acholi ethnic group, said. Walter Ochora, Gulu district council chairman, on Monday told the visiting delegates that the ICC's intervention was counter-productive to the "already successful [peace] processes on the ground". Ongoing peace efforts include a blanket amnesty, extended by the government to surrendering rebel fighters, which has given reprieves to even the most hardcore rebel commanders, as well as the negotiations spearheaded by former minister Betty Bigombe. A local traditional ritual for justice and reconciliation, 'Mato-Oput', involving the defendant's admission of guilt and payment of compensation to the injured party - after which justice is considered to have been done - was also being used to resolve hostilities between civilians and rebels in the north. "We are not after retribution because forgiveness is part of our culture and what we are seeking is a win-win situation," Acana said. The chief, however, said they were not against the prosecution of those who committed crimes against humanity, "but it is a question of when". "Issuing arrest warrants against rebel leaders will be the last nail in the coffin of the peace process, which everybody hopes should succeed," Acana said. "The priority should be peace first and justice later," Ochola, said. "Even if the chief prosecutor went ahead and issued the warrant, who will arrest Kony anyway - government and the army have failed." Local people IRIN spoke to seemed to know little about the ICC. They were, however, keen on forgiveness as a means of delivering reconciliation and peace to the region. "All of those fighting should go for peace talks," a 14-year old known as Night A, told IRIN at the Gulu Save the Children Organisation centre, where she is recuperating from two years in rebel captivity. "I know Kony might be difficult, but when they continue fighting, they will only kill children who are there [in the LRA] not on their will, but because they were abducted and forced to fight," she added. Night pleaded with the government to be forgiving because "at the end of the day, it is the children being killed". The comments follow a visit last week by leaders from northern Uganda, led by Acana, to the ICC's headquarters at The Hague, where they met the chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, and urged him to halt the investigations in the interests of peace. Promising to continue dialogue with the leaders, Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement on 18 March: "I am mindful of traditional justice and reconciliation processes and sensitive to the leaders' efforts to promote dialogue between different actors in order to achieve peace." The Ugandan government, however, said the delegation's efforts went against its position. "The government position is very clear," Grace Akello, minister for the rehabilitation of northern Uganda, told IRIN on 16 March. "We wanted these people prosecuted and I think that is the appropriate position that I also support." In July 2004, following a request by Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, the ICC initiated investigations into crimes committed in the war between government troops and the LRA. The LRA is notorious for its brutality, using rape, murder, torture and mutilation as weapons of war. The UN estimates that the rebels have abducted more than 20,000 northern Ugandan children since the conflict began and that over 80 percent of its fighters are below the age of 18. However, the ICC has come under increasing pressure to also investigate possible abuses by the Ugandan army, including the recruitment of child soldiers and the rape and torture of civilians. "The ICC prosecutor cannot ignore the crimes that Ugandan government troops allegedly have committed," Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program at the NGO Human Rights Watch, said in January. The LRA has been at war with the Ugandan government since 1988, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced an estimated one-and-a-half million more. Relief agencies have described it as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.