Lord's Resistance Army

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Flag of the Paramilitary LRA

The Lord's Resistance Army ( LRA ; German  " Resistance Army of the Lord" ) was founded in 1987 under the leadership of Joseph Kony in northern Uganda as a resistance movement against the Ugandan government under Yoweri Museveni . Around this time, several other prophets, allegedly possessed by ghosts, gathered supporters in Acholiland to fight Museveni. The LRA came into being after the Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Auma Lakwena (founded in August 1986) and the successor union continued by Severini Lukoya (in October 1987) as the third esoteric-militant organization claiming an indigenous Christian ideology.

As it sees itself, the LRA is a paramilitary group that fights in the border area between the Central African Republic , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan for the establishment of a state of God based on the biblical Ten Commandments . She is charged with numerous serious crimes in the context of the LRA conflict, which left 100,000 dead. After Uganda was able to largely drive out the LRA, it terrorized the population , especially in South Sudan and in Ober-Uelle (in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Recently, various countries have joined forces in the Regional Cooperation Initiative for the Elimination of the Lord's Resistance Army and its military component of the Regional Task Force under the supervision of the African Union in order to better bundle their forces.

The LRA was a terrorist organization that was supported by Sudan , among others , during the war of civil secession with South Sudan . After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , the LRA was classified by the United States as a terrorist group . The LRA was later removed from this list; According to a statement by the Ugandan government in 2017, the LRA is militarily weakened and no longer poses a serious threat to Uganda.

Emergence

In the Ugandan civil war after the end of the rule of Milton Obote in 1985, numerous resistance groups emerged who fought against President Yoweri Museveni . Among them was the Holy Spirit Movement, founded by Alice Auma . The founder considered herself a spiritual medium. The group was active with the Acholi living in northern Uganda . In 1985, at the height of the civil war, Auma declared that she was possessed by the ghost of a dead Acholi soldier whom she called "Lakwena" (messenger). Auma mixed Christian esoteric and eschatological ideas with traditional myths to create an ideology of moral purity. “Lakwena” ordered her to bring the civil war to an end, to found the Holy Spirit Movement and, with her supporters, to recapture Kampala from Museveni's NRA . In 1987 Auma marched south towards Kampala with thousands of supporters. Her spirit "Lakwena" had ordered his followers to arm themselves only with sticks and stones and to rub shea butter to protect themselves from bullets . Auma's supporters were defeated by the NRA artillery. Auma fled to a Kenyan refugee camp and spent the rest of her life there.

Joseph Kony , a commander of the Holy Spirit Movement , gathered the few survivors around him, went into hiding with them in the Ugandan rainforest and founded a local resistance group called Lord's Salvation Army . It was renamed Lord's Resistance Army in 1992. To crush the rebel organization, the NRA carried out various military operations in the following years, with the arbitrary arrests of sympathizers by government soldiers and other human rights violations on both sides. Another problem for the civilian population was the often unclear position taken by parts of the army in the conflict. Army aid often came too late after LRA attacks on villages.

Since its inception, the LRA has had neither a coherent ideology nor civil support. Notions of invincibility and elements of expectations of salvation seem to have been adopted from the Holy Spirit Movement , but do not explain the ideological and physical survival of this movement. The LRA benefited mainly from the civil war in South Sudan (which ended in 2005) by being supported by the government in Khartoum as an opponent of the SPLA operating in South Sudan . Other dimensions of the conflict are Uganda's tense relationship with neighboring Congo and Islamist groups operating within Uganda.

During the Civil War, the LRA long served the south of Sudan as a base, which is why the Ugandan government accused Sudan of supporting the rebels. In return, Uganda itself supported the Sudanese People's Liberation Army operating in Sudan , which fought against the government of Sudan. Since 2009, the LRA's retreat has been in an area in the south of Darfur near Kafia Kingi, a disputed area between Sudan and South Sudan . The LRA's operational areas are South Sudan, Eastern Congo, parts of Chad and the Central African Republic . During the raids, elephants are hunted in Garamba National Park in the northeast of the Congo, the ivory of which is sold by the LRA to finance it.

According to the Kony Manifesto, echoed through testimony from members, the organization is fighting for victory over President Museveni's government and for the subsequent establishment of a divine state based on the Ten Commandments .

Human rights violations

Refugee situation in northern Uganda, 2004.

In its fight against the civilian population in particular, the Lord's Resistance Army is proceeding with such brutality that Jan Egeland , Vice Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Coordinator for Emergency Aid ( OCHA ) of the UN , described it at the beginning of 2005 as "probably the most brutal rebel group in the world". LRA members pillage, kill, torture and rape practically indiscriminately in the northern regions of Uganda. Children are kidnapped in order to abuse them partly as child soldiers and partly as sex slaves .

In December 2003 Uganda decided to bring this case to the International Criminal Court in The Hague as the first in history . In June 2005 Luis Moreno Ocampo , chief prosecutor of the ICC, issued arrest warrants against Joseph Kony and another leader of the LRA, whose whereabouts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo could be determined.

The Swiss foundation for mine clearance lost two employees on October 31, 2005 near Juba in South Sudan. The two deminers - an Iraqi supervisor and a Sudanese deminer - were ambushed by the LRA and shot while driving back to Juba from a minefield. The foundation then suspended humanitarian demining for two months.

In August 2006, through the mediation of South Sudan, a ceasefire was agreed with the government in order to begin peace negotiations. On February 23, 2008, the LRA and the Ugandan government signed a ceasefire agreement. This contract was preceded by the so-called Juba Talks , which began in July 2006. As a result of this treaty, former rebels are now to be granted an amnesty and integration into the army is made possible. On April 10, 2008, a contract should be signed, which should end the conflict between the LRA and the Ugandan government, which has now lasted more than 20 years. However, the rebel leader Joseph Kony refused to sign because he had not considered some questions to be resolved. These included, for example, the charges of the International Criminal Court and the precise conditions of demobilization.

On December 28, 2008, the Ugandan army accused the LRA rebels of hacking 45 people to death in a church in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. A development worker confirmed the information and said it happened in a Catholic church in the Doruma area , about 25 miles from the Sudanese border. Caritas International reported on several attacks by the LRA on churches in Faradje , Dungu , Bangadi and Gurba , among others , in which up to 485 people were killed. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated the death toll in Faradje, Doruma and Gurba at 189.

According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch , members of the LRA carried out a serious massacre in December 2009 in the Makombo region of northeastern Congo, killing at least 321 people. Another 250 people were kidnapped, including 80 children. A total of 620 people were killed and more than 160 children were abducted between December 24 and January 13. The rebels attacked several villages; those killed were men, women and children. The militias tied up their victims and then killed them with machetes , axes or heavy wooden clubs.

According to the latest reports, the LRA is now also operating in the south-east of the Central African Republic. A unit of the LRA attacked the small town of Birao in the northeast in October 2010 . The armies of Chad and Uganda have since been more or less present in the unstable eastern regions of the Central African Republic.

On January 6, 2015, US soldiers in the Central African Republic arrested a man who pretended to be Dominic Ongwen , the LRA deputy leader who was wanted internationally as a war criminal.

The LRA killed more than 100,000 people and abducted between 60,000 and 100,000 children.

Movies

There are a few documentaries that deal with the LRA. These include:

The LRA also appears in the 2006 feature film Casino Royale . Their leader is called Steven Obanno and is played by Isaac de Bankolé . The figure was inspired by Joseph Kony.

literature

  • Artur Bogner, Gabriele Rosenthal : Child soldiers in context. Biographies, family and collective histories in Northern Uganda . (= Göttingen series on ethnology ) Göttingen University Press, Göttingen 2018 ( online ).
  • Tim Allen, Koen V Klassenroot: The Lord's Resistance Army: Myth and Reality. Zed Books, London 2010, ISBN 978-1848135635
  • Heike Behrend : Power to Heal, Power to Kill. Spirit Possession & War in Northern Uganda (1986-1994). In: Heike Behrend, Ute Luig (ed.): Spirit Possession. Modernity & Power in Africa. James Currey, Oxford 1999, pp. 20-33
  • Peter Eichstaedt: First Kill Your Family: Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army. Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 2009, ISBN 978-1556527999
  • Mareike Schomerus: The Lord's Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview. Small Arms Survey, Geneva 2007

Web links

Commons : Lord's Resistance Army  - collection of images

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In-depth: Life in northern Uganda: Nature, structure and ideology of the LRA. IRIN January 1, 2004; Kony's Invisible Christian Fanaticism. MWC News, March 20, 2012
  2. ↑ According to reports from May 2013 about an expected study by the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay: UN: Kony's rebel group LRA killed more than 100,000 people. Zeit Online, May 21, 2013
  3. ↑ Various articles in the North Congolese newspaper Itimbiry ya Sika
  4. ↑ in: Foreign Policy , December 14, 2010
  5. ^ Richard Dowden: Court threatens to block cannibal cult's peace offer. Royal African Society, 2008 ( at Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Philip T. Reeker: Statement on the Designation of 39 Organizations on the USA PATRIOT Act's Terrorist Exclusion List. US Department of State, December 6, 2001
  7. ↑ "Lord's Resistance Army." End of the hunt for rebel leader Kony. Frankfurter Allgemeine, April 19, 2017
  8. ↑ Alex Perry: In Africa. Journey to the future. Fischer, 2015.
  9. ↑ Payam Akhavan: The Lord's Resistance Army Case: Uganda's Submission of the First State Referral to the International Criminal Court . In: The American Journal of International Law . tape 99 , no. 2 . 403-421, pp. 407, April 2005.
  10. ↑ Helmut Sax: Shadows on »Africa's Pearl«. On the context of local armed conflict in Uganda. In: Gabriele von Arnim, Volkmar Deile, Franz-Josef Hutter, Sabine Kurtenbach and Carsten Tessmer (eds.): Yearbook Human Rights. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2000, pp. 224-238
  11. ↑ Bryan Christy: The Trail of Ivory . In: National Geographic, September 2015
  12. ↑ Jane's Intelligence Report , 7/2008, p. 6.
  13. ↑ [1]
  14. ↑ Rebels accused of Congo church massacre ABC News , December 29, 2008 (accessed March 28, 2010)
  15. ↑ Uganda: Kony Rebels Kill 400 Congo Villagers allafrica.com, December 30, 2008 (accessed March 28, 2010)
  16. ↑ Massacre of hundreds of people in the Congo uncovered . Spiegel Online , March 28, 2010.
  17. ↑ DR Congo: LRA Slaughters 620 in 'Christmas Massacres'. Human Rights Watch, Jan. 17, 2009.
  18. ↑ A humanitarian tragedy in installments. taz, May 27, 2010.
  19. ^ The Triangle of Death: Central Africa's New Hub of Regional Instability. UNHCR, December 16, 2010.
  20. ↑ LRA rebel Dominic Ongwen surrenders to US forces in CAR. BBC News, January 7, 2015, accessed January 22, 2015 .
  21. ↑ [2] Lord's Resistance Army has killed more than 100,000 people in Uganda. United Nations Regional Information Center for Western Europe (UNRIC). Retrieved May 1, 2018.
  22. ^ Wrong Elements. IMDb
  23. ↑ Slaves - On the Trail of Modern Slavery | ARTE. Accessed December 4, 2018 (German).
  24. ↑ slaves. Retrieved December 4, 2018 .