Uganda denies training Lendu people

The Ugandan authorities have denied training Lendu tribesmen, who are involved in a bloody ethnic war with their Hema rivals in northeast DRC. On 15 January, the Associated Press quoted the Christian Blind Mission (CMB), an aid agency active in the area, alleging that Colonel Peter Kerim, a senior Ugandan military officer had trained and armed 1,000 Lendu tribesmen with profits he had made from the sale of coffee. “The army officer they are talking about, Colonel Peter Kerim, is not in active service and lives in his village of Alur, and in any case all training camps for the Congolese are inside Congo not Uganda,” Lt. Colonel Noble Mayombo, the deputy chief of military intelligence in the Ugandan army told IRIN on Monday.

Uganda backs the RCD-Mouvement de Liberation (RCD-ML) of Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, which controls the Bunia area affected by the tribal clashes. The rebel movement has already denied involvement in the clashes.

CMB has produced graphic video tapes of the bloody clashes and estimated some 5,000 Hema people had been killed since the majority Lendu erected roadblocks around Bunia town. Tension in the area was heightened when Adele Mugisa Lotsove was appointed by Wamba dia Wamba as the governor of Ituri, a new province created from parts of North Kivu and Province Orientale. She was later sacked and has since defected to Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC).