4 000 kids unaccounted for
2005-09-28 18:11
Kampala - At least 4 000 children who were among some of the tens of thousands abducted by the Ugandan rebels from the north of the country couldn't be traced, said a Ugandan human rights group in a report obtained on Wednesday.
The report by Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) also accused the government forces of torturing civilians in the war-ravaged region, using methods that included suspending weights on genitals for extracting information or instilling discipline.
The war was waged by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas who had displaced more than 1.5 million people and abducted nearly 30 000 children and youth whom they had forced into their army. The LRA had also forced abducted girls into sex slavery.
LRA abducted 26 000 kids
Many of the children had come back home after escaping from the LRA or being rescued by the government forces, but according to UHRC, "by the end of 2004, out of the 26 000 children abducted by the LRA, 4 000 were still unaccounted for in northern Uganda".
UHRC said the military establishment tortured suspected civilians and soldiers in the northern region and other parts of Uganda to extract information or force a confession from them.
The report said: "In one complaint, a wife of a soldier who was about seven months pregnant was subjected to corporal punishment because she had a quarrel in the barracks with a wife of another soldier.
"Five army men held the woman down while another enforced corporal punishment."
Victims pierced with bayonets
It said: "Other methods of torture in the war zone included rubbing eyes with red pepper to obtain an admission, beating using gun butts, fracturing of limbs, piercing of victims with bayonets, suspending weights on genitals."
This was the first report by UHRC, which had launched a scathing attack against a state agency. The UHRC, a government body, was set up seven years ago to investigate cases of human rights abuses.
The report followed a recent attack on the Ugandan army by a United States rights body, Human Rights Watch (HRW), which said the military was carrying out wanton human rights abuses in northern Uganda, harassing and torturing civilians and raping women.
The US organisation further said that more than 1.5 million people displaced by the war in northern Uganda were left exposed to both the army, which harassed people and raped women and to the LRA, which killed or abducted them.
However, the Ugandan human rights body contradicted HRW allegations of neglect of the war-displaced saying instead, "the camps are better protected than before. Attempts to attack the camps by the LRA had all been repulsed."
- SAPA