Extend amnesty for northern rebels, UK minister tells government

Hilary Benn, the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for International Development, has urged the Ugandan government to extend an amnesty offered to rebels in the north. The extension of the amnesty, which is about to expire, would build confidence among rebels who wanted to give themselves up, but feared being killed or prosecuted, Benn said. "I have strongly expressed the view that the amnesty should be extended," Benn told IRIN on Tuesday at Uganda's Entebbe International Airport after visiting northern Uganda. "If it were to lapse, what message would that send out to those fighters who want to stop but fear the consequences?" Benn said that from his interviews with children who had recently escaped from the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), it was clear that a major factor in perpetuating the rebellion was "fear of what will happen if they come out of the bush". Similar claims have been made by religious leaders in the north who are pushing for a peaceful solution to the conflict. On 16 January, the government reduced the period of an earlier amnesty granted to LRA rebels from six months to three. Those three months expire on 16 April. The government said it was planning to scrap the amnesty altogether for senior rebel commanders. "They need to have clear messages about what to expect. They need to know that it is all right if you give up," Benn said. Britain, he added, had no qualms about the government's attempt to tackle the LRA militarily, but had not offered Uganda any military support in its pursuit of the rebels. "The amnesty must go alongside the military solution," he said. According to the minister, Britain was in the process of reviewing Uganda's defence budget with a view to possibly easing donor restrictions on defence spending - a core complaint of the government. He doubted, however, that calls to bring the LRA to the negotiating table could realistically be expected to evoke any meaningful response. "Given the history of LRA activities, it seems to be more of a cult than a political organisation," he told IRIN. "It's hard to see what there is to reason with." Uganda's donors, represented by the EC ambassador to Uganda, Sigurd Illing, have repeatedly called for dialogue to end the war in the north. The LRA have waged war in northern Uganda for 18 years. Led by a reclusive mystic, Joseph Kony, they say they want to topple the Ugandan government, which is dominated by southerners, and restore power to the Acholi people of the north. But observers note that most of the group’s atrocities are committed against defenceless civilians, usually fellow Acholis. Efforts last year to contact the rebels for peace talks within a limited ceasefire zone in the north fizzled out in March. The government peace team said the rebels "were never serious about talks". But according to local religious leaders, the talks failed because the army violated the ceasefire, on a number of occasions using it to contain rebel commanders and then ambush them. Critics of the amnesty law say it has been prepared in bad faith because it fails to provide a viable exit for Kony and his fighters, who are under military pressure everywhere they go. Speaking to IRIN at his home in Kampala, Charles Acam, a former rebel and friend of Kony whose group signed a peace deal with the government in 1988, said: "How can you say on the one hand, 'we are giving you an amnesty', and on the other, 'we will hunt you and kill you wherever you try to go?'." An estimated 1.5 million people in the north and east have been displaced by the conflict and forced to live in camps. Scores of others have been killed, while thousands of children have been forcibly recruited to fight for the rebels.