Rights watchdog accuses army of abuses

Ugandan army soldiers fighting a 19-year insurgency by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north of the country torture civilians as a method of enforcing discipline and extracting information from suspected criminals during interrogations, the Ugandan government human rights watchdog has said. "In 2004, the commission received 108 complaints alleging torture by soldiers of the UPDF [Uganda People's Defence Forces, the national army]," the Uganda Human Rights Commission said in its annual report for 2004, released on Tuesday. "There were more reports of torture in the northern and eastern parts of the country by the UPDF than elsewhere," it added. The spokesman for the Ugandan army, Lt-Col Shaban Bantariza, said the army was aware of the abuses and was dealing with them accordingly. "What they [the commission] are saying is what we already know," he said. "We have taken punitive action against people who commit atrocities. We have taken some officers to the court-martial and sentenced them, even to death, for such actions." "There are criminals all over the world, but whatever crime is brought to us will be given due process," he added. The commission said in its 216-page report that 4,000 children out of the estimated 26,000 abducted by the LRA could not be accounted for, meaning that they had either been killed or were still in the hands of the rebel group, notorious for replenishing its ranks through abductions, mostly of children. The report was released a week after the New York-based lobby group, Human Rights Watch, accused soldiers in Uganda's national army of raping, beating, arbitrarily detaining and killing civilians in internally displaced persons' (IDP) camps in its report, titled: "Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda." In its annual report, the Ugandan watchdog cited a series of specific incidents of abuse by the army, including one in which a pregnant woman was held down by five soldiers while another soldier whipped her following a quarrel with another woman in a military barracks. The commission said some male victims had reported that weights were suspended from their genitals while others were forced to display their penises to other people in what their tormentors called a "video show". Other army torture victims told the commission that red pepper was rubbed into their eyes to secure confessions, while some said they were bayoneted and struck with rifle butts. The rights group noted that torture was not explicitly a crime defined in Ugandan law books, which made prosecution difficult. "The state should domesticate the law prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment and this should be made a priority," it recommended. However, the commission contradicted the Human Rights Watch report's findings that the military had neglected its role of protecting IDP camps. Instead, the commission said the camps were "better protected than before. Attempts to attack the camps by the LRA had all been repulsed". The commission said that there were signs that the LRA was "greatly weakened". "However, a few small groups were still present trying always to attack camps and also civilians who move out of camps in search of food and water," it added. For close to two decades, the LRA has fought the government from bases in southern Sudan and northern Uganda. Since the start of the rebellion, the group has abducted well over 20,000 children for forced conscription.