ACHOLI MEMORIAL DAY 26 JANUARY 2008
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 still for the last 22 years. Even if thousands of industrial jobs were created in Acholi today, the the places will have to be filled up by qualified applicants from outside Acholiland. The neglect of schools and and abasence of any kind of planned education strategy to respond to the emergency situation and its long term implications for human resource development in Acholi lest it lagged behind, has been part of the strategy to marginalise the people in this region. As we speak, a complete generation of Acholi in the camps have not gone to even elementary school in the last 22 years. We ask ourselves, who are the government fooling, that expropriating land for sugar cane growing and creating jobs is the best way to respond to the dire situation in Acholi?
As we can see, different pieces of Museveni's strategic plans to marginalise Acholi are coming together. First it was depletion of livestock through cattle rustling by soldiers, rebels and Karimojong, with the government failing or neglecting to provide effective security. Second, it was driving people out of their homes into the camps without any form of emergency provisionings and social services planning for health care and education and subsistance. It was international charities that rescued the Acholi from immiment extermination by starvation. Third, a generation of Acholi children and youths have not gone to school in the last 22 years and many of whom were abducted, maimed and killed in the insurgency. Fourth, the slow pace and the vagueness of the government on when and how the Acholi can finally go back to their own homes now that there is relative peace. And fith and finally, government intentions to expropriate land in Acholi before people are resettled to their own former homesteads to cultivate and regain selfsuffiiency in food. Therefore, it does not seem that poverty alleviation and empowering the Acholi is the priority for government in its emphasis on land alienation, industrial development and creating employment. The Acholi are certainly not the intended beneficiaries, given the conditions outlined above.
For the record, the Achol are in the desparate sitaution they are in not because they were poor in the first place. These are a people who were self reliant and industrious. Today, they are no better than street beggars and transients. They have been reduced to to this sub-human level as a result of deliberate government policy to permanently debilitate the poeple in this region socially and economically so that they have no ability to organise to challenge the Bahima ethnic hegemony imposed on them by force of arms.
On Saturday 26 January 2008, the murderous regime of Lt. Gen. Yoweri Museveni, the dictator of Uganda, with his generals, will break into chants, called Wayo in Acoli, a ritual to celebrate their valour in killing Acholi over the years. On Saturday 26 January 2008, Northern Uganda Messenger Post and its sister SOS Africa News & Events, will feature blacked-out pages in commemoration of 22 years of genocide in Acoli. In other words, the blogs will not publish from mid night until mid night, Sunday 27 January 2008.
I would like to urge our readers, Acholi compatriots, Acoli forums and other Acholi run media groups to shut down on this day and join in commemoration of the dead, the maimed, and the suffering Acholi in the death camps in northern Uganda. Those in Uganda and in Acholiland can show their solidarity and in memory of their dead, by staying away from government functions and celebrations. Let no government officials force any Acholi to go celebrate the deaths of their compatriots and cheer those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against their kith and kins.
May the souls of our departed compatriots rest in peace and may they never be forgotten.
In Solidarity,
Okello Lucima.
http://northernugandapost.blogspot.com/
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 still for the last 22 years. Even if thousands of industrial jobs were created in Acholi today, the the places will have to be filled up by qualified applicants from outside Acholiland. The neglect of schools and and abasence of any kind of planned education strategy to respond to the emergency situation and its long term implications for human resource development in Acholi lest it lagged behind, has been part of the strategy to marginalise the people in this region. As we speak, a complete generation of Acholi in the camps have not gone to even elementary school in the last 22 years. We ask ourselves, who are the government fooling, that expropriating land for sugar cane growing and creating jobs is the best way to respond to the dire situation in Acholi?
As we can see, different pieces of Museveni's strategic plans to marginalise Acholi are coming together. First it was depletion of livestock through cattle rustling by soldiers, rebels and Karimojong, with the government failing or neglecting to provide effective security. Second, it was driving people out of their homes into the camps without any form of emergency provisionings and social services planning for health care and education and subsistance. It was international charities that rescued the Acholi from immiment extermination by starvation. Third, a generation of Acholi children and youths have not gone to school in the last 22 years and many of whom were abducted, maimed and killed in the insurgency. Fourth, the slow pace and the vagueness of the government on when and how the Acholi can finally go back to their own homes now that there is relative peace. And fith and finally, government intentions to expropriate land in Acholi before people are resettled to their own former homesteads to cultivate and regain selfsuffiiency in food. Therefore, it does not seem that poverty alleviation and empowering the Acholi is the priority for government in its emphasis on land alienation, industrial development and creating employment. The Acholi are certainly not the intended beneficiaries, given the conditions outlined above.
For the record, the Achol are in the desparate sitaution they are in not because they were poor in the first place. These are a people who were self reliant and industrious. Today, they are no better than street beggars and transients. They have been reduced to to this sub-human level as a result of deliberate government policy to permanently debilitate the poeple in this region socially and economically so that they have no ability to organise to challenge the Bahima ethnic hegemony imposed on them by force of arms.
On Saturday 26 January 2008, the murderous regime of Lt. Gen. Yoweri Museveni, the dictator of Uganda, with his generals, will break into chants, called Wayo in Acoli, a ritual to celebrate their valour in killing Acholi over the years. On Saturday 26 January 2008, Northern Uganda Messenger Post and its sister SOS Africa News & Events, will feature blacked-out pages in commemoration of 22 years of genocide in Acoli. In other words, the blogs will not publish from mid night until mid night, Sunday 27 January 2008.
I would like to urge our readers, Acholi compatriots, Acoli forums and other Acholi run media groups to shut down on this day and join in commemoration of the dead, the maimed, and the suffering Acholi in the death camps in northern Uganda. Those in Uganda and in Acholiland can show their solidarity and in memory of their dead, by staying away from government functions and celebrations. Let no government officials force any Acholi to go celebrate the deaths of their compatriots and cheer those guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against their kith and kins.
May the souls of our departed compatriots rest in peace and may they never be forgotten.
In Solidarity,
Okello Lucima.
http://northernugandapost.blogspot.com/
Comments
I couldn't agree with you any better about a Memorial Day for Acholi. January, to say the least, has a marked reality of sadness for Acholi. Amin started his mass slaughter of Acholi after a Jan 25 coup in 1971. As though to show a sequence of dates to come, Museveni overthrew the government on Jan 26 amidst a general agreement for peace. He (Museveni) followed this with a killing spree worse than Amin's and still going on 22 years later - an incident the whole world turned its back against and pretended it isn't happening.
I urgently encourage you - as a politician - to push for an Acholi Memorial Day that, like the Jews people, we may live never to forget what transpired. I advocated for the same on Kwot-Kaka blog. It would be an astounding day for anyone in power in Uganda and the world at large that there is a group of people in Uganda who have chosen to un-celebrate a "liberation" day sanctioned by the government and decided it must be a day of mourning. Acholi must recognize January as the month of sad memories because if we don't, nobody will entertain the idea of having Acholi recall the pasts.
By now we should be collecting money to build a genocide monument. Museveni slapped Acholi right on the face when he built a monument in Bar Lonyo while ignoring 22 years of NRM/UPDF bloodbath in Acholi.
Ku-konyi enu.