Calls for Kony arrest “counter-productive”

Renewed calls for the arrest of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony will create more animosity and hamper any efforts to conclude the ongoing peace process, a senior church leader said.

John Baptist Odama, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Gulu in northern Uganda, said after this week's demand for Kony's arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC): “If [the ICC] had not kept on hammering away about Kony, a final peace agreement would have been signed already.

"What we should be working for is to try and build confidence in Kony to respond to the peace initiative."

Ugandan authorities, however, said Kony was delaying peace efforts. "Kony is no longer a Ugandan problem but a regional problem that requires regional solutions," Okello Oryem, junior foreign minister, said.

"Everybody gave him the benefit of doubt and we have been patient with him, but he is instead delaying the peace process.

"Arresting him will not jeopardise the peace process because he is the one putting himself in danger by refusing to respond to peace gestures," Oryem, who is also deputy leader of a government team negotiating with the rebels, told IRIN on 7 October.

DRC attacks

In the past two weeks, the rebels have attacked villages in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), at least 5,000 Congolese who fled the attacks have arrived in Yambio, in Western Equatoria region of Southern Sudan.

About 150 Congolese were still crossing daily from the DRC to the villages of Sakure, 15km south of Yambio, and Gangura, 30km south-west. They told UNHCR they fled their villages near Dungu, in north-eastern DRC, because of the LRA attacks.

"One refugee, who had just arrived on a bicycle, said his wife and daughter had been abducted. It took him a week to travel to Gangura because he had to evade LRA roadblocks and ambushes – obstacles cited by other refugees as well," a UNHCR spokesperson said on 6 October.

Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

A camp for the displaced in northern Uganda: John Baptist Odama, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Gulu, has said calls for Kony's arrest will create more animosity and hamper any efforts to conclude the ongoing peace process

The agency quoted local authorities as saying that Moro village, 58km inside the DRC, was attacked on 5 October. "They said children were abducted, houses burned and inhabitants endured a lot of violence. In Sakure, refugees are sheltering with the local population," it noted.

"In the light of serious and converging information on attacks by the LRA against civilians in the DRC, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo calls for renewed efforts to arrest LRA leader Kony and his top commanders," the Hague-based court said.

Kony, it added, was using recent peace talks, "just as he has many times in the past, to gain time to re-arm and attack again ... The criminals remain at large and continue to commit crimes and they are threatening the entire region. Arrest is long overdue."

But Odama told IRIN: "What Mr Ocampo is doing only creates more fear on the part of the LRA and hampers the peace process. We would have gotten the signatures on the [peace] agreement if the ICC was not fond of hammering away on this issue of the Kony arrest."

The ICC first announced charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Kony and his top commanders - two of whom have since died - in 2005.

Thousands of people in northern Uganda have died in more than two decades of war between the Sudan/DRC-based LRA and the Ugandan government, while nearly two million were forced out of their homes at the height of the rebellion.

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