Death toll rises to five in Lira protests

Five people were killed in the northern town of Lira on Wednesday morning as thousands protested against the government’s "failure to protect its people from insurgency" and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army's (LRA) massacre of more than 200 internally displaced persons (IDPs) on Saturday. Godfrey Aropet, the Lira District police commander, told IRIN that one man was killed by a mob and four were shot dead. It was, however, unclear how the four had been shot, he said. At least 10 other people were injured, Uganda Red Cross officials added. "The police tried to handle the situation with as much restraint as possible, but the organisers of the march failed to take charge," Aropet said. One of the dead was from the Acholi tribe, to which most of the LRA's commanders belong. Sources said some Acholi homes within Lira town had been set ablaze by Lang'i tribes people who were among the protestors. Numbering over 10,000, the protestors flooded in from the town and surrounding areas, running, and chanting slogans in the Luo language against both the government and the LRA. They carried branches broken off from surrounding acacia trees, and banners calling on President Yoweri Museveni to resign. They smashed cars, beat up other people and broke the windows of the district commissioner's office, after failing to find him, and vandalised other buildings. Shops that tried to open for business were forcibly closed by protestors. One Uganda People's Defence Forces soldier wearing civilian gear but carrying his gun shook his head as he watched protestors smash his car windscreen. "Why are they blaming us?" he shouted. "I have also had three of my own children abducted by the rebels." Museveni, who has camped in the region to "oversee operations, so that we can finish these bandits", had on Tuesday, in a rare shift in the tone of government rhetoric, apologised to the victims of the massacre and expressed regrets at the army’s failure to protect them. The Saturday attack was the most devastating massacre of civilians so far during the 18-year conflict in northern Uganda. About 300 LRA rebels, dressed like regular army soldiers and armed with assault rifles and artillery, attacked the Barlonyo camp, 26 km north of Lira town, and overpowered the local Amuka militia posted there to protect it. Lira is 380 km north of the capital, Kampala. The rebels burned many of the IDPs there alive by setting fire to their thatched huts after ordering them into their homes at gunpoint. Other IDPs, who were trying to flee, were shot, bludgeoned or hacked to death by the rebels wielding clubs, machetes and AK-47s. The rebels killed more than 200 IDPs in the process. Sources in Lira said the attack could further inflame tensions between the Lang'i and the Acholi. Early in February, a Roman Catholic priest, Father Sebhat Ayele, told IRIN: "My biggest fear is that [the attacks] will stoke tensions between them. It has happened before." The cult-like LRA, led by a reclusive mystic, Joseph Kony, say they want to topple the government, which is dominated by southerners, and restore power to the northern people. Yet most of the group's atrocities are perpetrated against defenceless civilians, usually fellow Acholis. Kony claims to have magic powers derived from the Holy Spirit, and manipulates beliefs in witchcraft to instil fear in his followers.