ABDUCTED AND ABUSED IN NORTHERN UGANDA Over nearly two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) - led by notorious witchdoctor Joseph Kony, have a tried overthrow the Ugandan Government and institute a religious dictatorship. This is described as a holy war to “cleanse” Uganda of its evil. The irony is that the group justifies killing and stealing to achieve its objectives. Kony openly declares that he derives supernatural power and knowledge by conjuring up spirits. These spirits purportedly tell him that anyone found working on Fridays should be killed; anyone found riding a bicycle should have an arm or leg amputated. Children found crossing the path of the LRA have had their lips, nose, and ears cut off, and eyes plucked out. Instant execution is the penalty if the victim cries out in pain. As soon as children are abducted, they are stripped naked and forced to participate in witchcraft ceremonies, making them bullet proof for combat or ready for sexual violation. With more than 35,000 children estimated to have been abducted to date, the United Nations has referred to Northern Uganda the most dangerous place in the world for children to live and the world’s worst unattended emergency. In a recent NBC Dateline interview, Jan Egeland (United Nations Undersecretary General for Emergency Relief) reported that he has spent years begging world leaders to stop ignoring Northern Uganda. Mr. Egeland describes the Northern Uganda civil war being fought with children as “one of the biggest scandals of our time and generation”. For the past 18 year, the rest of the world has turned a blind eye to the abduction of countless thousand of children (as young as 7) to be used as child soldiers and sex-slaves. Mr. Egeland, who has worked in hundreds of different countries with human rights, peace, and humanitarian problems for more that 25 years, said he was “shocked to his bones” with what he saw in Northern Uganda, having never seen anything as bad. “This is terror like no other terror”. Yet, no one in the rest of the world seems to know anything about what’s going on. Villagers can no longer farm their land for fear of being attacked by a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by notorious witchdoctor Joseph Kony. As such, nearly 2 million people (90% of the population of Northern Uganda and 1/5 of all African refugees), are now living as internally displaced refugees. Despite military protection in refugee camps, LRA attacks on civilian populations continue. Children abducted by the LRA are forced to fight against National Military Forces, raid villages for food, destroy property, rape and slaughter civilians, and abduct other children. Young children are often forced to witness their parents being killed. Moreover, as a means of trauma and emotional manipulation, abducted children are required to participate in the killing of other children who have also been abducted (or face being killed themselves). These emotional manipulation tactics are aimed at traumatising children and discouraging them from escaping. Young girls are given to commanders as wives, and bare children into captivity to be groomed as the new generation of ruthless killers. It is estimated that 90% of the LRA is now comprised of children; creating a dilemma for National military objectives to counter the rebel group’s violent activities.
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