Peace campaigner could be deported, say security officials

Security officials in northern Uganda have recommended to President Yoweri Museveni's office that Father Carlos Rodriguez, a respected missionary and prominent campaigner for peace in the war-torn region, be deported for "spreading false information prejudicial to national security". "He made allegations that 6,000 people were arrested, that the fire in Pabbo [camp for internally displaced persons - IDPs] was started by a soldier, that people were shot at who tried to escape, that a priest was interrupted during mass. None of these things are true," the defence ministry spokesman, Maj Shaban Bantariza, told IRIN on Monday. Led by Gulu Resident District Commissioner Max Omeda, a committee comprising police and army officers responsible for the northern region decided unanimously that Rodriguez should be forced to leave the country on account of a statement he issued about the fire in Pabbo camp. The IDPs had said the government army deliberately torched their huts in the 1 February fire, but the army denied the accusation. Instead, the army countered, the camp had been a hide-out for rebel collaborators, and it had recovered 800 rounds of ammunition and some uniforms. The IDPs told the Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative, a prominent advocacy group based in Gulu, of which Rodriguez is a member, that claims that the army had found ammunition were a lie intended to divert attention from a fire that soldiers had started in the camp during a roundup of 6,000 people whom the army "suspected" of being collaborators. Subsequently, in a statement, Rodriguez strongly objected to what he described as the heavy-handed way in which Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers had rounded up people in the camp, whom the government suspected of harbouring Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) collaborators. He also raised questions about the way in which the UPDF had handled the fire, particularly in not allowing residents to try to recover their belongings. Rodriguez later retracted the claim that people had been shot at, but stood by the other allegations. But Bantariza said: "Six thousand people were not arrested in the raid. They were cordoned off so that a search could go ahead, then they were let go. This is standard procedure." A source at a Gulu-based organisation said: "He [Rodriguez] is critical of the government's military approach to the crisis in the north, and he sometimes exposes things they don't want exposed. They've been looking for a reason to crack down on him for some time. This would serve as a fine excuse." Some 1.2 million people live in IDP camps in northern and eastern Uganda, most of them having fled the LRA insurgency, which is led by the reclusive mystic, Joseph Kony. The LRA say they want to liberate the people of the north, but have mostly concentrated their attacks on the very people they claim to be liberating.