One of the most moving presentations we heard this week was from Lam Oryem Cosmas, the Executive Secretary of the Justice and Peace Council of the Ecclesiastical Province of Gulu. A lay worker who is Catholic, Cosmas works in northern Uganda, where he was born.
Cosmas is a strong believer in the power of reconciliation and forgiveness, yet he is also a pragmatist, who appreciates the utility of the threat of prosecution. For him, the indictments by the International Criminal Court against Lord’s Resistance Army leaders are the stick that will help bring rebels to the table.
He is intimately versed in the conflict. His village, Atiak, is also home to one of the LRA’s leaders, Vincent Otti, who is wanted by the ICC. On April 20, 1995, the LRA massacred over 250 Atiak villagers. This is the largest single massacre to date by the LRA and is included in the ICC indictment. Recently, Cosmas told us, he conducted interviews with the survivors “and they remembered this as if it were yesterday.” He described the LRA as an armed cult “like the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.”
One of the key points Cosmas shared with us is that no one will get everything they want out of any peace process. Those wanting retributive justice – perpetrators put in jail – will have to accept the fact that many will not be punished. Yet those who simply want to wipe the slate clean – the rebels and the government, with their own list of abuses – will have to accept wrong doing and make some offer of acknowledgment and repentance.
Reconciliation means different things for different people. One person might say, ‘I want my child back.’ But the child is dead. What can you do? The first pillar of any reconciliation is acknowledgment. But is it very painful.
Cosmas also complicated the idea of justice. For the people of northern Uganda, he said, it is not only about identifying and punishing perpetrators. “Justice also means that people should be treated equally and that there be right relationships. Things need to be put right to the extent possible. That is why reparation is necessary.” Currently, LRA rebels who surrender receive benefits, including cash, a mattress and cooking implements. “So far, victims have not received anything while former LRA fighters have received benefits.”
For girls abducted by rebels, return is incredibly difficult. Cosmas gave us the example of a girl who escaped the LRA, but had children. While her family was willing to have her back, they would not accept the children, fathered by a rebel through rape.
There have also been cases where the girl has rejected her children because of the pain and shame of how they were conceived. “The kind of justice we need should be broad and restorative,” Cosmas told us, and needs to include not only the legal aspect, but also support for victims to get therapy, help in reconstructing their lives, assistance for schooling and much more.
So far, however, Uganda’s government has been brought to this process reluctantly at best. Only in 2003, when UN official Jan Egeland visited Uganda, did the President Museveni take the situation in northern Uganda seriously.
While here, we have all been struck by how divided this country is. As far as political responsibility is concerned, the government appears to treat the northern third of the country as a separate country. When we spoke to David Wakikona, the Minister of State for Northern Uganda Reconstruction, he seemed quite content to say that much of the work is better done by outside organizations, including running orphanages. The government is good at making reports and pronouncements about all that is wrong in the north, but is less adept at taking responsibility for the poor conditions in the refugee camps and continuing lack of protection for villages.
Things are better than what they were before Egeland’s visit; yet one gets the strong sense that any gains are precarious at best.
Indeed, over 40 per cent of Uganda’s gross domestic product comes from outside donations, we are told. One of my colleagues here calls Uganda an “aid addict.” If the donations vanished tomorrow, this country would collapse. On our way to visit an AIDS clinic yesterday, I was astonished by how many NGOs are here. On street after street (pot-holed, crumbling and deeply rutted), all you see are the placards of international NGOs.
Cosmas told us that the villagers of Atiak have constructed a monument to commemorate the 1995 massacre. On it are the words: “In loving memory of our brothers and sisters who were massacred on April 20, 1995.” The monument is connected to a school that is now educating the next generation of Atiak children, who will always have a reminder of the past.
“Some people,” Cosmas said, “worried that the word massacre would offend the LRA, but I insisted. “This is the truth of what happened.”
At least in Atiak, the people are making their own truth and investment in the future, and not waiting for the ICC or anyone else to create it for them.