Daily Monitor, Raise your hands if you forgive the LRA

They all raised their hands. All of them. When the Local Chairperson for Koch Goma IDP camp, just an hour outside of Gulu, asked who would forgive the LRA, the 300 or so people gathered round all raised their hands.

I looked on in awe at the eagerness of the camp to move forward, to forgive. But I had my doubts about the sincerity of this activity. After all, so many people have already left IDP camps, that the only people that seem to be remaining are the old and the young, those who can’t leave because there aren’t basic amenities like schooling and clean water waiting for them in their long ago abandoned homes, homes that never were developed the way other parts of the country were because of the violence and insecurity that’s shaken the region for the past twenty years.

If you tell any group of young children to raise their hands, then hands shall be raised. Did they understand what raising their hands indicated? Were the youngest in the crowd even aware how the course of their lives had been affected by the same people now standing in front of them, demanding a hero’s welcome?

The camp that Martin Ojul, LRA spokesperson, and his team of delegates and monitors for the cessation of hostilities activities, chose to visit was close to Gulu town. Its proximity to an urbanised area had protected it from the worst kind of cruelty that the LRA inflicted in more remote areas like Kitgum and Pader.

There was no one at this camp without lips or hands or other missing appendages, the typical kind of cruelty the LRA was known to inflict. Or, if there were people like that at this camp, they certainly weren’t attending a ceremony based on pomp and circumstance more than substance or communication.

As the leaders of the LRA trooped through the camp, I wondered, did they realise that these squalid living conditions were caused by them?
“I am a son of this area,” said Martin Ojul, during his long winded speech.

But was he really a son of this area? Sons of this area had been abducted, not by him personally, but by the members of his ranks, to serve as child soldiers. Did he even have a right to claim this lineage? This patronage?

After the ceremony, Ojul took a thick wad of Shs20,000 notes out of his pocket, and handed them to several lucky bystanders. As if Shs20,000 would solve their problems. As if Shs20,000 would help rebuild lives shattered over the past 20 years. One thousand shillings per year.

In a lot of ways, it makes sense for the people of Northern Uganda to choose Mato Oput, traditional justice, over the system of retribution preferred by the International Criminal Court (ICC) currently pursing the arrest of top LRA commanders.

They only want this nightmare to end. Kony and his cronies have promised not to make peace until the arrest warrants are dropped, so of course, those who want peace would want the warrants dropped. But are they selling themselves short? Don’t top LRA commanders deserve the punishment meted out by the ICC?

If the people of Northern Uganda demanded more of their tormentors, perhaps more would be required of them.
Instead, they just raised their hands, desperate for the peace so elusive they were ready to forget past misdeeds. But atrocities forgotten, will peace be achieved?