Weapons of nudity

Weapons of nudity is foiling the plan to implement the grand scheme of Museveni to grab land in Acholi.
 
 
 
 


 Desperate times demands for desperate approaches. This the language the regime understands, its ugly but its working.
The people of Acholi are not easy walk overs.
...
The policy shift by Museveni to grab Acholi land is due to the wealth of land in northern Uganda and the President’s desire to control it. its vital to understand the role of land in the Acholi culture of northern Uganda. The cultivation of land is the primary source of wealth-generating production, and thus livelihood, in northern Uganda. The vast majority of Acholi are rural-dwelling small-scale farmers. They often supplement their diet with game procured through hunting. The land available for these activities is, for the far greater part, held in customary ownership. That is to say, ownership, even when it is individual ownership, is not conferred via government-authorized written title but rather through oral mechanisms of clan authority. Even when an individual—or more precisely, an individual family—holds claim to a parcel of land, the controlling idea is that it is held ultimately for the common good of the clan. One important study puts the matter this way:

The land which a family owns is not considered as being totally “theirs”: it is their heritage and the future heritage of their children. Since they see that a family exists only as a part of a wider community, so its land is held within the wider structure of a community (clan) and as clan’s land. Land is the fundamental productive asset, without which one cannot survive, and so one’s social obligations and claims are intimately connected to claims and rights over land. These obligations extend to the next generation: land must therefore be protected for them, and if anyone who leaves the village and fails to survive in the urban economy, the customary land is a safety net, because they can always return and be allocated a plot. Land is also the link with people’s heritage—quite literally, since it is on the family land that one is buried.

Hunting lands (tim) and grazing lands (olet) are held in trust by the clan as a whole. These are not empty lands; rather their purposes are best stewarded through allowing multiple families to make use of them whole rather than as divided up into smaller parcels. The fact that ownership is orally-based and dependent upon the memories of the persons involved makes customary ownership, particularly but not solely of the hunting and grazing lands, vulnerable in crisis situations such as the twenty-year conflict in northern Uganda.

On September 27, 1996, Museveni issued the mandate that all people in the Gulu district of the Acholi region move immediately to designated Internally Displaced Persons camps. The decision to displace the people into camps was by fiat. When Acholi MPs found out about the plan, they protested; Museveni then promised to re-consult with the military and to get back to the MPs in two weeks. He never did. It is noteworthy that it was Saleh who gave the reason for Museveni’s not doing so, pointing up the tight relationship between him and Museveni: no consulting took place because Museveni and Saleh “suspected bureaucracy and politicking over the issue.” That is to say, they were concerned about resistance to and perhaps defeat of their plan of forced displacement should the issue go to Parliament. When individual people refused to move to the camps, the soldiers beat them; when whole villages refused, the UPDF often used attack helicopters against their inhabitants. A report from the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative is worth quoting at length.

In every camp we visited in Gulu, people told us invariably that they were forced. In some cases people remember that soldiers gave them a seven-day deadline (Opit) or only three days (Awac), threatening to treat those who resisted as rebels. In most cases, however, it would appear that soldiers just stormed villages—often at dawn—without any previous warning.They told people to move immediately without giving them much time to collect their belongings. People were often beaten to force them out of their compounds. Much of the property left behind was looted by both rebels and soldiers. A number of people who ventured to go back to their former homes soon after found them burnt down. Men told us that they were harassed and even shot at, and women raped. A resident of Paicho summarised that experience of unbearable stress with these words: “We were beaten by Government troops, who accused us of being rebel collaborators and told us to go to the trading centre.”

In Pabbo, Opit, Anaka, Cwero, and Unyama we met a good number of people who had direct experience of having had their villages shelled. We were told that big guns of the BM21 6 barrel type were used to fire at villages where people refused to move. . . . Aerial bombardments were used—we were told—in places like Kaloguro village, in Pabbo, Awach, KocGoma, Amuru, and Anaka. This first wave of forced displacement occurred at a time of the year which normally marks the beginning of the harvesting season. Given the fact that in most cases people were not given time to collect any foodstuff, their crops remained in the fields or in the granaries. In Pabbo and Opit people told us that there were cases of Army helicopters being used to collect foodstuff from abandoned villages. Force was also used by the UPDF some months after the camps were started, in order to compel back into the camps communities who had gone home to tend their fields. We heard this complaint in every camp we visited in Gulu and in some in Kitgum.
 
and 63 others like this.
  • Robert Mayanja that was activism of the highest order,cordinated m7 is NO MORE
  • Pope Pius Ongom Ozil · 4 mutual friends
    comprehensive anylsis good work
  • Guma Andrea The sadist is going back to the drawing to come up with a grandiose plan, "tasemba nakyo" though his times are not far.
  • Robert Ojara In our culture, when an elderly woman stripes naked and holds her breasts in protest, it's a very serious curse which is irredeemable.
    Don't forget that these are our mothers whose actions are a big challenge to us the youth who hail from the region.
    ...See More
  • Robert Otim The
    luos (Acholis to be precise) have norms and cultures to follow.
    Unlike where the Mu7s comes,when a woman is married she gets to bed
    ...See More
  • Gillian Nantume by the time a mother gets to this level, it is serious
  • Lilian Kiapi · Friends with Drew Ddembe and 9 others
    Eh, abomination!
  • Wodacholi Fearles Kirama · 16 mutual friends
    Thanks for that brief fact. There is little for the great part of the history of Uganda except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath...
  • Okello Donas · Friends with Charlie Lakony
    mu7 go back to whea u kem from
  • Sokolokobangusay Kolongo The Acoli have had setbacks, but you haven't seen nothing yet. People who are proud and have a sense of dignity will in time never be doormats. http://www.newvision.co.ug/.../667195-govt-halts-amuru...
    DISTRICTS of Amuru and Adjumani have been at logger...
    newvision.co.ug
  • Robert Ojara I remember when president Museveni ordered the return of all guns within 7 days, an innocent man from Paibona was compelled to admit that he had anti aircraft hidden in the bush.

    I tell you what? This man was beaten to insanity, and when NRA soldiers asked him to show them, he took them to an Anthill and said, "muduku en!". Meaning that here is the gun.
    ...See More
  • Kilak Prossy · Friends with Onyuk Andrew and 5 others
    Great explanation and analysis omego
  • Ken Temajo · 2 mutual friends
    Ojoone, As we blame LRA for what they did in northern uganda,,, You must also know that UPDF also committed weird atrocities and what hurts most is seeing the then key commanders who headed those operations now yapping in the community... is this ICC really functional? if so then who is SEJUSA?
  • Robert Ojara Land is the focal point of Acholi culture. It's what unites the Acholi people against any foreign intrusion. A symbol of identity and hope. Small as it may be, it can still feed many generations to come. It's a shared asset which is owned collectively by the Acholis.
  • Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi · 31 mutual friends
    In Acholi culture its a curse for women to undress for you in public
  • Robert Ojara Evelyn, more so if they also slap their private parts in the process.
  • Ken Temajo · 2 mutual friends
    Jal Ojara, meno opedo kwonge, its always done when something has gone out of hand
  • Evelyn Matsamura Kiapi · 31 mutual friends
    So Robert Ojara did the women slap their parts?
    23 hrs · Like · 1
  • Robert Ojara Evelyn, they did it many times and in a spectacular fashion.
  • Joseph Tumushabe The last three paragraphs of your post constitute crimes against humanity. But when the ICC prosecutor came here, she was effectively micro-managed by Government agents especially those hailing from the north.
    23 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • Joseph Tumushabe So Moses, form a committee. With people in and out of the country. Get credible witnesses whose identity you should protect if necessary with your lives. Prepare a file. Send it to ICC by following the procedures as laid out.
    23 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • Robert Ojara Tumushabe, the idea of fragmenting Northern Uganda into concentration camps, was a brain child of the key members of NRA military council. The task was asigned to Gen.Tunyefuza, and it was a sagacious execution.

    The rationales behind the whole idea we
    ...See More
    22 hrs · Unlike · 5
  • Balungi Andrew Daniel I like the way land is owned in Northern Uganda. It took me time to serve in Gulu to appreciate the suffering in Gulu.....
    22 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 2
  • Joseph Tumushabe Robert Ojara, such details on goals and objectives of the IDP camps could not have come out of any formal organ of the army. The council is usually not privy to all the intelligence information.
    Such objectives are usually conceived by an evil genius and a few advisors. They then use a good intention (such as fighting the Kony insurgency) to do their evil act.
    22 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • Joseph Tumushabe Even the Commanders on the ground may not know. You begin seeing new commanders getting appointed, others deployed and others withdrawn to make way for more brutal or cunning or mistake prone officers trusted to execute evil.
    22 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • OKuya C Juninho so where can we run to! they the govt should knw that we have long suffered &we need real #PEACE
    21 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • Robert Ojara If the motive was to give them the leeway of attacking the rebels, how comes that camps behind Gulu Government prison and te gwana which are within the vicinity of Gulu municipality could get attack at night?
    21 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Kenneth Oringo · 3 mutual friends
    be it 400 years, no situation will be permanent.
    21 hrs · Unlike · 3
  • Kalanzi Richard Ssemakookiro · 6 mutual friends
    Thats why the word cessation has kept in ma mind for so long. why really would some wish to rob poor wanainchi's land in acholi? i worked in gulu for 2 years and i got some of the above revelations from the locals near pece and oyam. For heaven's sake ...See More
    21 hrs · Unlike · 3
  • Moses Atocon Atyekwo Joseph hopefully by Gods grace I will be inside the ICC this summer and we see how we can macro manage.
    21 hrs · Like · 1
  • Robert Ojara When president Museveni assumed power in 1986, he found all the arsenals empty and immediately smelt a rat. He started intimidating a peaceful tribe by giving deadlines and conducting door to door operations.
    The motive of the camp was to render us economically vulnerable. It was aimed at making us poor and submissive. Unfortunately it has made us more United and resilient.
    21 hrs · Unlike · 4
  • Kampala Youths Govt should know that with this forced eviction and land grab will force Acholi people to defend their rights and land thus leading to another war, there are brothers in South Sudan like Riek machar who can support this cause and aggretion towards north and another LRA kind of war will emerge once again but this time it will be bloody
    21 hrs · Unlike · 3
  • Waibi Alex · Friends with Wafula Oguttu
    Museveni and his gang have a stake in the sugar industry and they want the land in Acholi to produce sugar for the Sudanesse market. It is important to document their every transgression so that should the civillians fail to stop them today,tommorow when NRM is gone it will be easier to get justice.
    20 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • Robert Ojara Spot on! and they are targeting southern Sudan by taking sugarcane growing and the factory nearer to the border.
    Acholis have been surving without sugarcane production for generations. Why at this time?
    ...See More
    20 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 1
  • Adam Kifuddekwesiba Kabano These women ah,ah!!
  • Dick Okumy · Friends with Alex Okullo and 3 others
    Will they do this when M7 comes around? I was impressed when people started crying with tears as a sign that they had a enough of suffering, This action is the only means ordinary people have now as you expect Government to provide services and yet they take the little from them
    19 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 1
  • Kampala Youths Acholis will burn all this Madivhani sugarcane plantation give it time.
    18 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Opot KaIcaka · 11 mutual friends
    That is either innuendo or uninformed opinion. Southern Sudan has plenty of land for sugar cane growing. Check out along the nile river & you will see how huge the fertile land is. In size alone, Southern Sudan is two or three times larger than Uganda. In Northern Uganda we neither need sugar plantation nor animal park.
    18 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Robert Ojara They are using State security operatives and high ranking government officers, to bulldoze people and grab lands. We are not going to sit back and watch.
    18 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Robert Ojara Yes, southern sudan has plenty of land for sugarcane production. What Museveni and Mahdvani are trying to avoid is the financial cost of that huge land needed for production.

    Secondly, they can't grab lands in southern Sudan because it undermines her territorial integrity and breaches international law.
    ...See More
    18 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Opot KaIcaka · 11 mutual friends
    First thing first. Generalities is dangerous thing! If the regime is using high ranking government officials & state security personnel to bulldoze folks from their land, then it is citizens responsibility to identify and mentioned the NAMES of these f...See More
    17 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 1
  • Robert Ojara In a democratic country, government has to protect its citizens and their property. Protection of citizens and our property is the prerogative of the State. To the contrary, it's the State robbing the citizens.

    Huge capital investment involves key dec
    ...See More
    17 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 2
  • Justus Amanya I like the vigilance of the cameraman...oba concentrating on which bit...? LOL
    13 hrs · Unlike · 1
  • Magala Ismail The article is an eye opener and one day those responsible will be held to account for their evil deeds. Keep the fight on
    9 hrs · Unlike · 2
  • John Bosco Lakoch · 27 mutual friends
    ??????? respect humnity????? the life of these community is very very very important.....??????? this is a season for them to be working on their land to improve their economic livelihood after the long suffering to recover.... will these responsible ...See More
    6 hrs · Edited · Unlike · 1
  • Opot KaIcaka · 11 mutual friends
    Robert Ojara, unless you don't understand the regime of Museveni or feigning ignorance, Uganda is not a democracy, Uganda is to use a better term, a dictatorship. That is why everything revolves around the man called Museveni. It therefore goes without...See More
    5 hrs · Edited · Like · 1
  • Komakech Job · Friends with Mary Kelly and 10 others
    still dont know how land can make my mother walk naked.......
    5 hrs · Like · 1
  • Karuhanga Didan The price for liberty..
  • John Ojara Olanya , Govt must act and stop the nonsense of taking peoples land!
    49 mins · Like · 1
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