Religious Leaders urge Great Lakes Region presidents to uphold human dignity

By Valerian Kkonde

PEARL NEWS SERVICE

As the fourth International Conference for the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) convened in Munyonyo- Kampala- Uganda from 11-16,Care International in Uganda organized a Breakfast Prayer Meeting, on December 14 2011, with Religious Leaders on Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV) against Women and Girls. The aim was to help formulate a position to be handed over to the presidents.

“We are here to build momentum, prepare ideas that will be presented to the heads of state and enable us forge a way forward on this challenge that is dangerously stalking our society,” Msgr. John Baptist Kauta told the gathering.

The Religious leaders, under their umbrella Organisation: Inter- Religious Council of Uganda- endeavor to promote co-existence, moral and spiritual integrity, social-economic welfare and collaboration action through sharing knowledge and resources for the common good. The Council comprises of the Catholic Church, Church of Uganda, Orthodox, Seventh Day Adventists and the Pentecostals.

Juliet Nakato Odoi of ACORD Uganda said that the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region was a result of recognizing that the region is a melting point for conflict.

“Government forces, UN peace keepers and many others have been accused of committing atrocities against women and girls,” she said adding that the Democratic Republic of Congo is considered the most dangerous place in the world for women to live in.

The ICGLR was set up against the backdrop of the war in DR Congo (2002-2006). It aims to implement the Pact on Security, Stability and Development. It brings together eleven heads of states from Tanzania, Zambia, South Sudan, Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Kenya, DR Congo, Central Africa Republic, Angola and Burundi.

Two victims of SGBV were allowed to give their testimony to highlight the extent to which this violation of human rights is entrenched. It is also a way of rallying the public to condemn this vice and promote all efforts geared toward its prevention, eradication and restoration of the dignity of the victims.

Evelyn Aciro of Kitgum narrated how, at a tender age of 9, she was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels and handed over to a 30-year old man to be his wife! She was torn apart and treated with PPA.

 She had been abducted together with her brother. They were trained in military tactics and use of arms. As the training progressed, the abductors suspected that if the boy was left to complete the training, he could revenge to those who had raped his sister. They asked the commander to allow them kill him.

When their request was granted, they ordered Aciro to kill her brother! And she shot him dead. Aciro started mourning. But mourning was not allowed. She was told that if she continued with the mourning she too would be killed or moved to another unit. She asked for the transfer.

But before she could leave, the men forced her into rounds of sex, one after the other. In the new unit she was again handed to another 30-year old as wife. She fought in Sudan, Uganda and DR Congo.

At 14 she gave birth to her first child. With her child on the back, ammunition on the head and gun in the hand, she had to face the attackers. And life went on like that.

One day, they had to come to Uganda to collect food in Luku trading Center. They were attacked by the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF). They scattered in different directions. Evelyn Aciro fell in a pit latrine with her child. That was where they spent the night. In the morning she crawled to a tree near the road.

When she tried to stop a man who was passing by, the man fled. But later returned and asked her what she was doing at that spot. After narrating her ordeal, the man went to the pit latrine to try and establish whether she was telling the truth.

The stranger took her to her mother who was living in the Internally Displace Peoples camp. The mother received her warmly. Two days later, she decided to take her to the Amnesty Commission. On their way the vehicle was ambushed and five people died on the spot. Aciro and her mother survived.

The mother decided to take the daughter to her uncle who was staying in Southern Sudan. Aciro was not safe even there; people started pointing fingers at her. She had lived there while in rebel captivity. She decided to return to her mother after three years.

In 2010 she was taken up and registered by Kitgum Women Peace Initiative. She is now being counseled and trained in hair-dressing and tailoring.

“I hope I shall be able to generate income to cater for my child,” Aciro said in a voice filled with triumph and hope.

And Evelyn Aciro sounded a strong message to government and the public: she urged government to stop conflicts and recognize them as human being.

Aciro also complained that women combatants are discriminated against as due consideration is accorded to their male counterparts. She prayed that the public identifies it self with them- the victims. From her testimony, Aciro felt hard pressed by the fact that her child has no clan, a great mark of identity in the community she belongs to. It follows that when the public accepts her, even the child is accepted and lack of a clan will not be a source of trauma.   

Anek Grace of Pader also narrated to the Breakfast Meeting her ordeal under captivity. She was abducted in 1986 as a 12 year old and turned into the wife of a government soldier. When he was at the frontline, she would be beside him in a trench.

One day a bomb buried her half way. She was taken to Kitgum barracks and given two escorts; one was a Muganda and the other a Langee. After sometime the escorts started quarrelling among themselves. One day the Langee woman got a gun, cocked it and pointed it at her. The Muganda escort grabbed it. The Langee escort got a knife and stubbed me.

The Langee escort was taken to Gulu. It was in Gulu that Anek escaped and started to live in the bishop’s house. She worked at St. Luke and she used to leave work late. Between the workplace and residence, there was a bush and that was where on the fateful day she found a soldier with a gun. The soldier asked her where she was going. She told him that she was going to Gulu High school to visit a friend.

At that time there was a civilian who was approaching, but on seeing the soldier, fled and went to alert the police guarding the bishop’s house. The soldier had not seen the civilian. The police came with fire. The soldier raped her to the extent she could not walk. She spent the night in the bush. That was where the police found her the next morning.

To add salt to the wound, the police took her to their home. She stayed there for a month. They took her clothes and gave her a towel; that was all she had. The policeman was called Mugisha.

One day a Gisu soldier from Anaka came and stayed with them for three days. He left his gun at the police station where Mugisha worked. Another Gisu came to visit and they went to the market to buy potatoes. He had guns. At night they forced me to leave the house with them. I came to realize the place after crossing the Nile.

There was a road block at Karuma. We were stopped and searched. When asked where they were taking the sack of potatoes they said they were taking them to Mbale. The soldiers said it was impossible when Mbale was the source of potatoes. The sack was emptied and the guns recovered.

I was taken aside and interrogated. The commander asked me about my relationship with the men and thus had an opportunity to narrate my ordeal. I was taken to Aloro and again raped. After, we were taken to Gulu barracks for three days. I was again kept separately. The man was told to report to police daily but he refused.

At night we fled to Mbale. I produced four children, all girls. He started mistreating me for producing only girls. He called me a harlot. I prayed to God that I have a boy. And I got him. After sometime, we separated beds and said that the boy was not his. I told him that ever since he took me to Mbale I had known no other man.

One day he told me to hold the baby with the head facing him. He got his penis and started hitting the baby’s soft part of the head! He did this while saying that “Brian if you are my son you will be alive after three days. If not, you will be dead.”

The man had a daughter with another woman. One day he sharpened a panga and told me to say my last prayers. He said that he was going to kill the three of us. I grabbed his hand and I said that Satan, Jesus had defeated you. Get away from here. He got the boy and hit his head on the wall.

He had given me ten thousand shillings. I used it to go to police. But police did not assist me. The man wanted to rape me. I decided to flee. I had two children with me. I last heard of him when he had given away one of my daughters to another man. I have completely lost contact with him.

It is Wurodet- Pader that took me up. One day a man called me to his office and asked me why I am always buried in thoughts. They started counseling me and they are assisting me a lot. That is how I started having hope. And that is why I am here.

Anek Grace too has a word for government: the Community Based Organisations are close to them. Government is far. Support the CBOs. She requested that they be given a lifeline so that their children can receive education and health services. She expressed a lot of worry given the fact that even when they are received back into their families, from captivity, the children are not.

“This situation is real especially in Northern Uganda. The children from captivity are not allowed in the families of their mothers,” Juliet Nakato said.

Stressing the need for the victims to receive rehabilitation, Nakato said that if their scars are not healed they will have a bearing on their children and society as a whole. She further observed that the perpetrators usually justify these abuses using religion. Even the laws in place are not implemented because society somehow lets these abuses pass.

“Lack of awareness, sensitization about religion, and the lack of institutions to turn to all aggravate the abuses. And those tasked with administering justice are the major culprits.”

Msgr. Kauta, the Secretary General of the Catholic Episcopal Conference, added that the abuses are all over the place: it is the same stories in Luwero, Kasese, Teso and else where. On the continued lamenting for lack of funds he said that the endemic corruption in the country is to blame.

“Unfair distribution of wealth and power is the cause of all this. You cannot realize a sober society unless efforts are geared toward its transformation.

“The family that is the foundation of all this is neglected. Nobody wants to fund activities geared towards improving the family. A person who was not given love and care in the family cannot work for peace,” executive Director of Family Support Group Inc. Florence Kwesigabo said.

A Makerere University participant observed that men lack a medium to express or address their concerns. He said that gender should be about justice and equity. The participant used the case of Draru who confessed killing General Kazini and that of the killer of Kato a homosexual activist.

“These two cases were all involving sexual violence. But Draru was sentenced to 13 years while Kato’s killer is serving 30 years.”

He called upon the Church to come up with programs to create a forum for men and to teach boys to become parents, fathers.

Msgr. Kauta further observed that society promotes male chauvinism: when a family gets a baby boy, it is regarded as continuity for the family. “He is a heir. But the girl is considered as sugar for the family. That is in terms of dowry.” He proposed that gender should be replaced with equal opportunity for all since in America gender refers to homosexuals. He added that globalization is also contributing to this violence.

Care International in Uganda’s Lillian Mpabulungi Ssengooba said that men’s call to be brought on board is a foot in the right direction. Rallying the public to monitor their governments’ performance on these policies, she called on the heads of state to declare zero tolerance to SGBV and even improve the budgets to address it.

“Governments have perfected their art of massaging donors by ratifying. But the implementation, psychosocial support and health facilities are lacking. Joyce Laker shared her story after forty years.

“Many live with this trauma for life. There is need for reparation for survivors. It is the reparation fund that will help restore the dignity of survivors; the future leaders. This will give the people an opportunity to heal.”

Pastor Sserwadda said that poverty is at the root of this violence and calls into question Uganda’s ability to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“In America when you roll your eyes before a woman it is termed as abuse. But here is our daughter being raped at nine! Our girl stays with a man for four years and submits to all sorts of abuses! This is poverty.”

For Peninah of the Adventist Church, a number of issues are at play in this violence. She said that while culture would play a positive role in this, it is adulterated by modernity. Even the Ministry of Ethics exists only in words; it is on the top of the tree with no roots anywhere in the society.

She added that civic education has been relegated to election periods. Peninah called for community-based intervention budgets as a way to address this evil.

Alexa Bagenda Miwanda of Justice and Peace Commission- Kampala Archdiocese- told PNS that conflicts, wars and any civil strife may increase the prevalence of SGBV but they do not cause it; SGBV exists in all societies and individual women and children experience it in every social and economic group.

“Whichever way one may look at it, SGBV is violence against women and as such it is a belated human rights issue that can no longer continue to be ignored. It is a health hazard because it contributes to the spread of HIV/AIDS and a chain of sexually Transmitted Infections.”

Bagenda says that SGBV must be tackled in openness by involving different people at different levels right from the household, as it will bring about a new process that will strive to engage people and address this evil in our midst as a responsible community.

She urges religious leaders to take a lead through the different regional bodies and lobby their respective governments to come up with strategies that will protect the women and children who fall victim to SGBV, and make men act more responsibly and more accountable for their actions.

For the GLR political leadership Bagenda says it is possible to come up with laws that protect the women and children, and also make HIV/AIDS a joint responsibility for both men and women. And when it comes to testing, both should be in a position to take up the challenges and support one another.

“This will not only help and protect the women and children but will go a long way to enhance justice, peace, unity, sustainable development and responsible parenthood in our region.”