Poking out of northern Uganda’s tangled bush and tall elephant grass, a crucifix of two welded metal poles painted white marks a mass grave.
On the stone slab below it, an epitaph in the local Acholi language: ”Here lie 28 people who were killed on August 19th 1986.” It does not say how.
More than 20 years of civil war between Uganda’s government and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have sent tens of thousands of people to their graves.
Most were massacred by marauding rebels notorious for such atrocities as beating villagers to death, hacking body parts off survivors and fire-bombing thatched huts with their occupants still inside.
Locals say this grave is different.
”This was a massacre by government soldiers,” said Ijeren Lakob (56) as she gazed over the tombstone to a dark row of jagged hills beyond.
Residents said the grave contained the bodies of northerners accused of plotting an uprising against President Yoweri Museveni, whose southern rebels took power in a coup in 1986.
”They rounded up the men then shot them in the head. Everyone else ran. We came back after some time, they were skeletons,” Lakob said, adding that villagers gathered up the bones and buried them.
The government and rebels are due to resume talks in south Sudan this month after signing a second part of a multi-stage deal aimed at ending one of Africa’s longest conflicts.
Some think this massacre near what is now Namakora camp was a trigger for a war that uprooted nearly two million people.
”After Namakora, people felt it was better to die fighting than wait to picked up and killed,” said Paul Omach, a northern academic who teaches politics at Kampala’s Makerere university.
‘Why fight us?’
Two decades later, the movement that started as a popular uprising has made civilians its victims, killing thousands.
”[LRA leader Joseph] Kony has murdered many more than the government ever did,” said Namakora camp resident Obadia Obol (75) adding that the LRA killed many members of her own family.
Obol said she remembered the rebels storming her village and spraying bystanders with bullets.
”How can they be defending us when they are killing people and cutting ears off?” she asked. ”If you want to overthrow the government, why fight us?”
Analysts say the reasons are complex.
”They attacked civilians when the government armed them against the LRA as counter-insurgency. [It was] to teach them a lesson,” said Omach.
He added that the LRA felt betrayed when support for their movement waned as people became tired. Horrific acts like mutilating people — an LRA trademark — are partly symbolic.
”’You report us to the government, we cut off your lips so you can’t report. You ride a bicycle, you could be an informant, so we cut off your legs,”’ Omach said.
LRA commanders, four of whom are wanted in the International Criminal Court, shrug off accusations of wanton killing.
”War means killing. You are waging war to kill people,” fugitive LRA deputy commander Vincent Otti told Reuters by satellite phone from his Congolese jungle hideout.
”Government armed people with bows and arrows, so they became our enemies. We only kill those who are fighting us.”
This vociferous denial by the LRA that they attack unarmed civilians, despite much anecdotal evidence, angers activists.
”They always tell you ‘No, it is not true we kill civilians. We are setting them free,” said Father Carlos Rodriguez, a peace campaigner in the north.
”I don’t think they really want to face it.” – Reuters