Uganda: Africa's Secret Genocide

For more than a decade, government forces have held nearly 2 million people in some 200 camps across the country where disease, starvation, and deprivation have resulted in death rates that are three times that of Darfur

When Uganda receives attention, the Museveni government generally manages to divert it towards the deservedly reviled Lords Resistance Army, yet its own human rights record is far worse.

The LRA in fact grew out of a pre-existing situation caused by the Ugandan government which seems close to genocide (in this case of the Acholi people, 95% of whom have been forced into government run concentration camps).

The death rate in these camps is three times higher than in Darfur. It’s a major global catastrophe – and we hear nothing of it.

While Sudan’s Darfur region has drawn the world’s attention, an equally catastrophic genocide just across the border in northern Uganda has gone ignored, writes a former senior United Nations official in the July/August issue of Foreign Policy.

In his essay, The Secret Genocide former U.N. undersecretary-general for children and armed conflict, Olara A. Otunnu reveals how the Ugandan government has used its 20-year war against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as cover for the persecution of its own people in a network of concentration camps that kill 1,500 children a week.

“To the extent Uganda receives any attention, it is generally in the context of the bizarre and brutal LRA,” he says. “That is where the awareness ends, however, and that’s just how the Ugandan government wants it.”

On Wednesday, the Ugandan government is scheduled to meet with representatives of the LRA to begin peace talks aimed at ending the decades-long conflict. But Uganda’s people have more to fear from their own government then the mysterious guerrilla force, Otunnu argues.

For more than a decade, government forces have held nearly 2 million people in some 200 camps across the country where disease, starvation, and deprivation have resulted in death rates that are three times…

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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