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Uganda is worse than Darfur

Virunga Mountains

People's Media and Agency:





Dictator Yoweri Museveni is busy playing peace-maker in africa-sending peace troops to Somalia, Sudan and also decieving the international community that everything is okey and they should come and invest in uganda. Oh dear, dear! How can you invest in a country that uses a Nazi social program against 4 million of its own defenceless population?

The international community and politicians in uganda should be ashamed of themselves for just seating in their air-conditioned offices doing nothing on the suffering of an entire people. We are calling upon all descent people to take to the streets of uganda in solidarity with the people of northern uganda! We are very convienced that foreign refugees in other camps are being looked after better than our own brothers and sisters in museveni's concentration camps. FDC, UPC, DP, etc. Forget about anti- 3rd term demos, think of the children, women, men and the future generation of Northern uganda!!


"Anne Richard, the IRC's vice president of government relations and advocacy, briefed the Human Rights Caucus of the House of Representatives Thursday on the toll the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government is taking on the civilian population in northern Uganda.

Richard told the representatives that the number of Ugandans displaced from their homes has almost tripled in the last two years, to about 1.4 million. Human rights abuses—including forced abduction, murder, rape, and the use of children as combatants by both sides—are pervasive.


Richard cited an urgent need to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the conflict, provide protection for civilians, and ensure that significant funding is available for humanitarian programs. She quoted an IRC colleague who said the situation in northern Uganda is worse than Darfur, where the ongoing humanitarian crisis has received far more public attention and international aid, and offered several recommendations:"



ANOTHER DARFUR?


U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland compared the situation to the well-publicised problems in Sudan's Darfur region.
"If they go out (of camps), they are killed as much, or raped as much or worse as in Darfur, by the Lord's Resistance Army and others," Egeland said in a recent statement.




Museveni has rejected the comparison, but that hasn’t stopped aid workers continuing to make it.


“One hundred percent of the population is affected by this kind of crisis -- it’s huge,” Gael Griette, an expert covering Uganda for the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO), told AlertNet.

Griette said that the entire rural population of Acholiland was in displacement camps.

“People have been cut off from their livelihoods, cut off from everything. They are in camps with nothing, and insecurity is very high,” he said.

“In terms of magnitude and acuteness we can compare what is going on in Northern Uganda to Darfur.

“What is very different between the two crises is the way it is addressed in terms of funding, humanitarian agencies being present in the field, and on top of all it is very different in the way it is being covered in the media.”

Griette said one of the reasons northern Uganda did not get much media coverage was because the LRA had been terrorising the local population for so long that the crisis was seen as old news.



“But this is short-sighted because the crisis has tripled in terms of the number of people affected and multiplied by five or six in terms of acuteness in the past two years -- more or less the same time as the Darfur crisis,” he said.

"Perhaps one approach is to build on growing interest among US officials, media and public in Sudan and the Darfur crisis and try to adopt a broader, regional perspective,” Richard said. “We should consider how to help people on both sides of the Sudan/Uganda border. Without a doubt, though, the key is greater U.S. support for peace and protection programs."
Profile of those involved in this tragedy

Free Uganda

Comments

  • Unlike Darfur Uganda is not seated on a basin of oil reserves. Why should the capitalist machine that controls the media and political sound bite care about uganda? Uganda has nothing to offer apart from jobs to foreign "social expatriates". Its up to ugaandans to solve their problems, let the people kick out "Dictator Yoweri museveni" as he is the one managing the conflict and not Kony because Kony is miles away near the Sudan/ Ethiopia border. I wonder when was Kony last in uganda?

  • Shock Therapy for Northern Uganda's Peace Process

    Africa Briefing N°23
    11 April 2005

    OVERVIEW

    The peace process aimed at ending the eighteen-year old conflict in Northern Uganda is in critical condition because neither the Ugandan government nor the insurgent Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) appears fully committed to a negotiated solution.[1] After the LRA increased its atrocities against civilians in February 2005 and ignored a request to demonstrate its good will, the government decided not to extend its unilateral, limited ceasefire and re-focused on a military solution. The mediator, former Ugandan State Minister Betty Bigombe, needs to obtain a new, more comprehensive government proposal and then test the rebels' willingness for peace by travelling to southern Sudan to put it directly to their leader, Joseph Kony, if the chance to end an extraordinarily brutal conflict is not to be lost. Neither is likely to happen without more international engagement.

    The LRA is reorganising for intensified conflict. Its attacks on civilians are becoming more frequent and are conducted by larger units. Joseph Kony, its single real decision-maker, has still not responded to any government proposal. Kampala appears to be losing patience with the mediation effort, putting priority instead on a military solution and expanding efforts to target LRA leaders. The process of reintegrating former LRA fighters into their communities is proceeding poorly, thus negatively affecting the calculations of LRA fighters who are still in the bush.

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) is prepared to issue warrants against LRA leaders suspected of committing crimes against humanity, a step that if not handled carefully could drive the rebels definitively out of the peace process. However, the ICC is well aware of the risk and is undertaking a series of activities which have increased mutual understanding with Northern Ugandan civil society.

    Bigombe continues to speak on the telephone with Vincent Otii, her designated LRA contact, and may meet with him soon. Reportedly, the insurgents are considering some gesture, perhaps even proclamation of their own unilateral ceasefire. However, new procedures and new substance are required if the peace process is to be given a decisive push. Since the lack of direct, persistent engagement with Kony is a critical handicap, Bigombe should seek agreement and help from the Ugandan government to travel to southern Sudan, where Kony is located, in order to take up face-to-face negotiation.

    This would also need the active assistance of the Sudanese government and its new peace partner, the formerly insurgent Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), as well as key diplomats in Kampala, Khartoum, and Nairobi.

    Kony will not agree to a ceasefire that does not address the LRA's two central concerns -- post-settlement physical security and livelihoods. Therefore, the ceasefire-first approach the government has been following[2] should be replaced by a proposal for a comprehensive settlement that includes guarantees for Kony and other LRA commanders, international monitoring in all aspects of implementation to counter corrosive distrust that could potentially spoil the deal, and a peace dividend to help rebuild war-ravaged communities.

    Given the attitudes of the parties, none of this is likely without more vigorous and sustained international support, most particularly from the U.S., which has considerable influence with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and whose reserve causes LRA leaders to doubt it supports a negotiated peace. Unfortunately, Washington is preoccupied with events in Sudan, even though the viability of the recently signed peace between the Sudanese government and the SPLM is partly intertwined with the fate of the southern Sudan-based LRA.

    A European troika of Norway, the UK and the Netherlands is working hard but it would benefit from more direct American reinforcement; all four countries should appoint senior envoys to lend their efforts more credibility with the parties.

    Kampala/Brussels, 11 April 2005

  • Anybody branding our president "athug" is anenemy of the
    people of peaceful uganda and should be brought to book
    seriously and immediatly.

  • Comparing uganda with Dufur region is the most unrealistic thought that any sense baring african looking at
    the current state of affairs from asober and genune point of view should have in his/her sober and spotless mind.
    Well! You could be looking at president Museveni as athug,
    criminal, warmonger etc but i want to make this clear if you're not against Museveni as aperson believe me you, you are against the whole of Uganda where iam right now
    peacefully with foriegnerbusinessmen and tourists enjoying uganda's peace.YES i accept that there is suffering and death in northen uganda but all this is not by yo "WANTED THUG" atleast "the thug" has fought like ageneous to normalise the anomaly in the region and blieve me or not without amanof the zeal and diplomacy H.E presidentMuseveni uses to approach disaster, the entire great lakes region will be in unending conflicts. Lastly those who WANT Museveni can just walk gently to Nakasero you'll get him at NO cost completelyBUT beware of flying debris from "his peace loving andenjoying" ugandans.

    great numbers of foriegners

  • Museveni is a thug period!

    You said "You could be looking at president Museveni as athug, criminal, warmonger etc but i want to make this clear if you're not against Museveni as aperson believe me you, you are against the whole of Uganda where iam right now peacefully with foriegnerbusinessmen and tourists enjoying uganda's peace"

    Nazi german had a booming tourism industry too!
    During the genocide in Rwanda, business men sold loads of Primus and pangas(matchets) to interahamwe.
    Congo DRC; Your beloved president and his family where busy plundering the country while 4 million people where being killed by UPDF.

    No comment for the rest..I'm not sure what you're trying to write. Please, next-time try and write in your language.

  • I live in Britain. I wan to do something to stop museveni but I don't know what to do. People here do not know the extent of suffering people outside the western world endure. What can I do?

  • Hi Margret,
    Thanks for your concern about the suffering of people in Uganda.

    We have just finished our phase 1 of informing the western world but the western world is as guilty as Museveni and they've decided to ignore our cries.

    Phase2 of our direct action without the help of westen governments but ordinaly folks like you is underway soon.

    What we need now are Vox pops for podcasting and radio broadcast- if you think you're-up to it, give us a shout!

    Regards

    Keep checking this space
    www.alluta.org/blog

  • The Detention of Kizza Besigye FDC President and election of Museven as the NRM Presidential candidate marked the maximum pick of terror in Uganda. Join us to fight it

  • Hi,my name is ines, i'm 15yrs old and I really want to help the kids and families of Uganda, (I live in Western Australia) what can i do to help??

  • DEAR Ugandans, the cure for Uganda`s problems is not what we talk in to the west but what we try to do for our country for example one journelist said that "what we are seeing in Uganda is better than what was happening 20 years past" fellow Ugandans you for get so quickly remember what happened in Rwanda when whites looked on as Africans butchered fellow Africans.Not surprising Am afraid to say if we don`t stand up things are running out of hands.EVIL PREVAILS IN COUTRY WHEN MEN STAND A SIDE AND WATCH. msamn2@yahoo.com

  • How can you possibly say that Uganda's crisis is worse than that in Darfur?! As far as I'm concerned, they are both hell on earth, in both cases, children's lives are being ripped away, and people are being slaughtered for no reason at all. In both cases, nothing is being done to stop this massacre. So now you tell, me, what is it that makes them so god damn different! Is it the oil? The money? If Sudan has so much to offer, why won't anyone take a stand to stop what can only be described as genocide, and terrorism. Why? I'm not saying that we shouldn't do somthing about Uganda, but I am saying, we can't forget about Darfur either, both desperately need help. And if your answer is that we can only help one country at a time, then you are just as bad as those who stand by and do nothing.

    Thankyou for your time, and I apolize if this has offended you or anyone else, for that was not my intent.

    Sincerely,
    Brianna Lopez

  • What insults us most, the West has been very vocal on Darfur and done the Opposite on Congo and Uganda.
    6million plus have died in Congo DRC and 1000 every week in Northern Uganda.
    The double standards of the west is what makes some of us not see Darfur as "genocide" but another scramble for Africa's resources.
    I've been to Darfur and the scale of deaths there are very minimal as compared to Uganda and Congo.
    The darfur crisis was manufactured by the west and continues to be used as a propaganda weapon for Expansionism.

    Soon " Bird Flu" will be used to demoralise Africans and a new market for Western NGOs will be created like what happened with HIV/AIDS, etc. in Uganda.
    Till the West stops exporting acts of social terrorism, the African mind will continue to Sleep.
    We've seen how social terrorism has destroyed the African Mind in the Americas and Europe, divide and rule is their weapon of mass destruction. Ever wondered why "black people" hate Africans? Because of the European social engineering!

  • How can the UK government forcibly return people back to Uganda? My friend arrived in Uk aged 16 in 2003 to escape a horrific situation. She has noone and nothing in uganda and is sure she and her small child will be in serious danger for their lives there. Her application to stay in the UK has been refused and she is to be forced to return this coming week. There seems little we can do to prevent this. Any help would be deeply appreciated.

  • Hello Amanda,

    Your friend is likely to face a military court and her child sent to Kyankwanzi National indoctrination School before groomed for the army. Those that faced the military court have been found dead.

    You can only help your friend if you made the campaign public-make banners, posters and take the campaign to train stations and other public places. Avoid Whitehall, its a waste of time. Don't be ashamed to break the Law, unlike your friend, you wont face a slow death at the hands of a dictatorship.
    You're welcome to use these leaflets to tell your government the reality in Uganda.

    http://roehampton.blogspirit.com/list/campaign_material/attrocity1.pdf

    http://roehampton.blogspirit.com/list/campaign_material/idp.pdf

    http://roehampton.blogspirit.com/list/campaign_material/statecrimes.pdf

    http://roehampton.blogspirit.com/list/campaign_material/attrocity2.pdf

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