Northern Uganda Messenger Post

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a promontorie were, as well as if a mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. John Donne ----------------------------------------------------------- http://folk.ntnu.no/makarov/temporary_url_20070929kldcg/internationale-instr-defence_ministry_nazarov_1977.mp3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Friends, readers and Acholi compatriots, It will be 22 years to the day, on Saturday 26 January 2008, when an ethnic army seized state power and initiated a pogrom against the Acholi people. Former soldiers, Acholi civilian, children, women and the elderly were rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, raped, sodomised and massacred throughout Uganda. A war was imposed on our people, and a genocide has been decimating our people since. They were driven from their homes, dumped in concentration camps without protection and provisions. As our people hang onto their lives by the skins of their teeth, the murderous NRM /A regime is conniving with Acholi apostates to make the final solution a reality by denying Acholi forcibly confined into concentration camps undisputed rights to return to their ancestral lands. This is being done under the pretext of development and creating employment. This is most harrowing because education and other socio-economic infractures in Acholi ground to a stand ...

I have not stopped agonising over International Criminal Court (ICC) partial action in northern Uganda by indicting only the Lord's Resistance Movement / Army (LRM/A) elements, and not also Yoweri Museveni and commanders of his National Resistance Movement / Army AKA UPDF for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And to add insult to injury, of the five indictments besides Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti, the other three are former abducted children who rose through the ranks in the LRM/ A. In any case, at the time of their indictements in 2005, they were not the most senior officers of the insurgents. More senior members of the insurgent group, Brig. Kolo and Brig. Banya, had surrendered to the government barely a year and had since been treated with kid gloves both by the ICC and the Uganda government. The puzzle I have not been able to solve is: why charge Raska Lukwiya, Dominic Ongwen and Charles Odhiambo, but let go scot free, Banya and Kolo, who abducted, trained and deploye...

Investors should avoid NRM state patronage like plagues     If I had Madhvani's money and wanted land elsewhere outside Busoga, the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, is the last person I would want as a pitchman. Do not get me wrong; the dictator is still strong and not about to abdicate soon. Moreover, he still commands rapt attention from a retinue of patronised clients and hangers-on, who have instant access to the state, political power and resources. Therefore, an investor who wants shortcuts and decision by diktat, rather than through a market of free sellers and buyers;   paying fair market prices; would find statehouse powerbrokers, the president and kick-back dependent ministers, good contacts. However, a serious industrialist whose forefathers painstakingly built his inheritance and industrial portfolios through painstaking savings, strategic investments decision-making and shrewd avoidance of obvious market and political risks, would shun like a plagu...

NORTHERN UGANDA MESSENGER POST: Imposing "development" from above: Why Museveni's robbery of peasants to enrich his corporate friends needs to be challeged

IMPOSING “DEVELOPMENT”FROM ABOVE: Robbing peasants to enrich Museveni’s corporate friends Putting politics ahead of Lives Relative peace in northern Uganda is forcing people and groups to re-envision their futures. Individual entrepreneurs, communities, government agencies, NGOs and public international organisations, are appraising their future roles and activities in a changing stance from emergency humanitarian provisioning to reconstruction and development in a post conflict society. For aid agencies, their plans for the future are contingent on disbandment of concentration camps and resettlement of people to their homes. Like the NGOs, Yoweri Museveni, the National Resistance Movement / Army (NRM/A), and their apparatchiks in Acholi, are repositioning themselves to remain politically relevant in the region. Instead of “iron-fisting”, it is now time for “iron-roofing”, and for peasants in Acholi who drink sugar, to be charitable and donate their land to big profiteering subsidiarie...