Lord's Resistance Army ordered to attack Catholic missions

Catholic missions in northern Uganda are on high alert after the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) declared that they would be the next target for its attacks on the civilian population of the north. Speaking on a Catholic radio network used by missions in northern areas lacking cellphone coverage, Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, ordered the attacks to be directed against Catholic priests, nuns and missions throughout the areas in which the rebels are operating. Father Carlos Rodriguez, a Catholic priest of the Acholi Religious Leaders’ Peace Initiative (ARLPI), who has made several efforts to facilitate dialogue with the LRA, told IRIN that he and some colleagues had heard the broadcast. "We heard it ourselves in a radio communication. There is no doubt that the order was given to attack us, the Catholic Church and its missions," Rodriguez said. Previously, the LRA, which says it is fighting to replace Uganda’s current government with a theocracy based on the Biblical Ten Commandments, had indicated that it was willing to place its trust in Acholi religious leaders for peaceful negotiations. Most ARLPI representatives are also representatives of the Catholic Church. But Rodriguez said nothing had really changed. "We have never had any illusions about being more protected than anyone else. The fact that Kony can kill, maim and abduct innocent children means no-one is really protected," he told IRIN. Father Joseph Gerner of the Catholic parish in Kitgum - one of the north’s most troubled areas - said no extra security measures would be put in place, because Kony’s pronouncements did not signal any threat that was not already present. "Will they attack us? Well, anything is possible, but then we knew that anyway. This changes nothing. Are we supposed to just shy away from our work?" he asked. "No. We intend to continue to help protect the people of northern Uganda as best we can." He noted, however that Kony’s statements had revealed a very worrying shift in the LRA’s rhetoric. "This is very strange, this change, given that before it was only the Catholic Church they said they would trust," he told IRIN. "I can only guess that someone must be telling him that we are against them." Rodriguez said the LRA was still furious that the peace efforts being made by the ARLPI had led some of its senior commanders to come out of the bush and rejoin society. "Kony is clearly angry about the fact that we helped some LRA to finally come out," he told IRIN. "But we won’t stop. We are here and still ready to receive anyone who wants to renounce the killing of innocent civilians." Meanwhile, the attacks on civilians continue. Paddy Ankunda, the Ugandan army spokesman for northern Uganda, told IRIN on Monday that 10 civilians were killed and an unknown but susbstantial number of children abducted in an attack on a trading centre in Apac District, in north-central Uganda, late on Sunday.