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IRIN Feature - Ugandan rebels tell their story

Sporting a long black skirt, a beige woollen blouse and black jacket, she crossed Nairobi’s Uhuru Park to a vendor, picked a sweet, paid for it, stole a glance at us and smiled. Immediately, the vendor introduced 17 year-old Zemwa Ochola, one of the Ugandan “refugees” who have been hanging around Uhuru Park since October 1999. “I’m a Ugandan, who do you want to see?” she enquired in fluent English. Zemwa was captured in 1997 at the age of 14 in the northern Ugandan town of Gulu by rebels who were operating under Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), based in southern Sudan. She had just started high school. Her abductors took her across the border into Sudan where she became what is known in rebel circles as “mtumba wa wano”, a terminology used to refer to young girls who are abducted to be used as sex-slaves and cooks by the rebel “commanders”. The term also depicts the girls as cheap commodities who can be “purchased” at the cheapest rate for “sexual pleasure by all”. “I have been raped many times, my life is hard,” Zemwa said. “There is no food, no clothes, no shelter. I would like to see my family again, I would like to go back to school.” In her eyes one sees not just uncertainty, but a total loss of self esteem - a life “nipped in the bud”. “I call myself a rebel,” Zemwa says. But when asked about the cause for which she is fighting, her face becomes downcast and she cannot answer. “I would like to become a doctor, since my life in the bush has enabled me to know various herbs and also I know a bit of biology from school,” she said. Zemwa is one of 300 children, part of a group of 2,000 LRA rebels who reached Nairobi from southern Sudan after a crack developed in the ranks of the LRA, with the intention of surrendering and taking advantage of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s amnesty offer issued last year. “The split came up following the brutal killing of six elders from northern Uganda, including two LRA officials Lagony and Okello, by Tata Olweny [an LRA official] groomed by Kony,” the coordinator of the surrendered rebels in Nairobi, Nimrod Chandi Jagweri, said. “We had also learnt from the ‘Monitor’ newspaper while in Rumbek [southern Sudan] last year that Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni had offered an amnesty to all rebels,” he added. The six elders had reportedly travelled to southern Sudan to try and convince the rebels to resort to peaceful means and reconcile with their people. “But Kony was misinformed by some of our Nairobi-based officials that the elders had an ulterior motive and this resulted in their very, very, brutal murder,” Jagweri said. “They wanted to kill all of us who supported Lagony, Okello and the elders’ initiative, but we rebelled and fought back, and that is when we decided to move southwards.” The group crossed into Kenya via Lokichoggio. “It was not easy to get protection and assistance from the local community, we even had to sell our guns,” he explained. “We moved in very small numbers of threes or fives, and about 2,000 of us reached Nairobi in October last year.” According to Jagweri, some of the group moved in with Ugandan refugees already living in Kenya. The rest decided to make a home out of the one kilometre-long underground sewerage trench in Uhuru Park. “We had to discipline the thugs and the street people who use this trench,” he said. “Some of us slept, while other kept vigil. “We were there for two months after which all of us were taken in by fellow refugees in different slums in the city.” The leader of the group’s women’s service corps, Vicky Agnes Akelo, bemoaned their “wasted lives”. “This is no life, I am so bitter, I would like to go back home and continue teaching as I used to,” she said. The group is made up of children, teenagers, middle-aged men and women and old men. Except for the children born in the bush, most of them were abducted and initiated into the rebel movement where “you either choose to do as ordered, or the commanders make you sleep [kill you]”, Akelo said. “We have seen so many killed.” Some of the teenagers were in school, but many of them have little or no education. In the slums they are currently being taken care of by counsellors. Akelo warns that appearances are deceptive. “These people are dangerous, they have done unimaginable things,” she said. The groups’ leaders are urging UNHCR to take in the children and help trace some of their families. However, UNHCR says it can only deal with “already-registered refugees”. “The process to have this group registered can take a very long time because of the overwhelming number of cases we have,” a spokesperson said. The group has presented itself and its case to the Ugandan High Commission in Nairobi and asked to take advantage of Museveni’s amnesty offer. The High Commission then contacted the Ugandan government which “was receptive and we have visited Kampala twice since”, Jagweri said. “The government sent a verification team here in May, and promised to repatriate and resettle us.” “But it is taking a bit too long and many of us are now wondering whether the president was genuine in the offer or it was just a trick he used to make us come out [of the bush],” Jagweri added. Noting that the amnesty offer expires on 17 July, he said some of his fellow ex-rebels had already left Nairobi in fear of their lives. The Ugandan government has acknowledged the case of the 2,000 former rebels in Nairobi. “We are handling the case,” an interior ministry official confirmed. “We have all their names, files and photos and all the government departments are aware of this case.” He added that the government was “committed” to resettling them. “A task force commission to implement the amnesty was set up last week,” the official said. He noted that implementation had taken a long time because the government had to put in place concrete measures to ensure the resettlement exercise would work. A similar exercise carried out previously in eastern Uganda had gone wrong. “When they [returnees] were given money they instead disappeared back into the bush, so we have to organise it in such a way that it can succeed,” the official said. He gave assurances that the plans for repatriation were at an advanced level and would probably take “not longer than a month”. Meanwhile, the ex-rebels continue to face an uncertain future, desperate to go home but fearful of whether they will ever be accepted by their communities.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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