Bishop Ochola Speaks out

Bishop Ochola (left, at a interfaith conference in 2003), a retired Anglican bishop from Northern Uganda recently addressed the Episcopal church in late June 2006. He called upon brothers and sisters here in the USA, at the annual Episcopal church conference to pray and take action on the situation in northern Uganda. Minority groups, such as the Acholi and Langi are being killed and abducted by the LRA, and also killed by disease, starvation, negligence and violence, in large part, because of the government's policy of placing civilians in internally displaced camps. The retired bishop's talk is powerful and moving. It is a call to action for anyone who professes to believe in a God of mercy, compassion, love and justice. This is what Christ calls us to do, friends. For anyone who rests in the power of Christ's redemptive love - we are called to speak the truth so that the light of Christ would shine in all the dark corners of the world....we are called to repent of our own sin - and then to move to fight sin and injustice wherever it exists in this world.

"Religion that God accepts as pure and without fault is this: caring for orphans and widows who need help and keeping yourself free from the world's evil influence."
-James 1:27

Let us not turn a blind eye to what is happening to what some have called the 'invisible' children of the world, or the 'forgotten people.' Let us listen and bring attention to the suffering of those who have no voice and who have been ignored and abused for so long. Here is the speech delivered by Bishop Macleord Ochola:

PRESENTATION BY THE RT. REV. MACLEORD BAKER OCHOLA II, RETIRED ANGLICAN BISHOP OF KITGUM DIOCESE, NORTHERN UGANDA, TO THE 75TH GENERAL CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

JUNE 2006

The Presiding Bishop, all the Bishops, Clergy and Laity of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, and all Members of the GENERAL CONVENTION in your various capacities, Ladies and Gentlemen, I greet you all in the precious Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

First of all I want to thank you all for according me this golden opportunity to address all the delegates and guests of the 75th GENERAL CONVENTION of the Episcopal Church of the USA, on an issue of great importance and urgency; a matter of life and death in Northern Uganda. I have come in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to tell you about the GENOCIDE that has been going on in Northern Uganda for the last 20 years.

You will be sad to know that terrible crimes against humanity have been committed with impunity in Northern and Northeastern Uganda by both the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF). Many people have been maimed permanently for life. Many people have suffered mutilation of limbs, noses, ears, and lips at the hands of the warring factions, especially the LRA. Over 30,000 children have been abducted and taken into captivity in Southern Sudan. Children have been abused and used as child-soldiers, as sex-slaves, and as killing machines against the civil population.

The Government of Uganda has also used violence to force a majority of the population into the Internally Displaced People’s (IDP) camps. The harassment and forcing of the people into the IDP camps started in 1996 in Gulu. As result, many people have lost their lives due to the conditions of congestion in the IDP camps. At the beginning of 1997, the people of Lamwo County in Kitgum District suffered terrible massacre of over 400 people at the hands of the LRA rebels. Thus, the people of Lokung, Padibe, and Palabek Gem and Palabek Kal, fled from their villages and sought safety and security into Kitgum Town in 1997. This was the beginning of the massive displacement in Kitgum District. While in Lamwo County the people fled from their villages in fear of being killed by the LRA rebels, it was a different story in Aruu County where the people were forced by the UPDF into the IDP camps in 1997.

There were outbreaks of cholera, meningitis, measles, diarrhea, and many other related diseases due to congestion in the IDP camps. As a result many people lost their lives in the IDP camps in 1997. There were over 500,000 people living in the IDP camps, both in Gulu and Kitgum in 1997, under very appalling conditions. By 2002 the number of the people living in the IDP camps had jumped from 500,000 to 800,000 people. At the beginning of 2003 the number of the IDP camps reached its peak of over 2.6 million people uprooted from their homes in Northern and Northeastern Uganda. Currently over 1.7 million people are still languishing in the IDP camps.

The death rate of 1000 people dying every week, according to a health and mortality survey of July 2005, is due to the appalling and inhuman conditions in the IDP camps. The Government of Uganda has carried out this survey in partnership with international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN organizations. While the terror by the gun of both the LRA and UPDF has killed the people of Northern Uganda, the catastrophic and inhuman conditions in the IDP camps have had a greater toll. Whether death by the LRA, death by the UPDF, death by diseases and malnutrition; the people of Northern Uganda have died like flies or rats and continue to suffer in squalid conditions in the IDP camps. This is the genocide I have come to talk about. I have not come to defend which party to the Northern Uganda conflict is more demonic or has killed more people than the other because all who have died, all who have been raped and abused whether by LRA, UPDF or those who have died due to preventable diseases because of the inhuman conditions in the IDP camps are all our children!

Many of the 1000 dying per week have been children dying of malnutrition. It is significant to point out that children did not die of malnutrition before the massive displacement into IDP camps. Malnutrition was not known in the world of plenty of Northern Uganda before the war. Just like your own children, our children too are great resources to our society and the world. Our destiny depends on our posterity. But both the LRA and the Government of Uganda have denied the children of Acholi, Lango and Northern Uganda their God-given dignity and rights to life. As a result, Northern Uganda is the most dangerous place for children to live in.

The children of Northern Uganda have had their growth and God-given potential in life stifled by both the LRA and the UPDF. The LRA has done this through abduction, brutal killings, maiming, mutilation, and gross violations of our children’s rights. On the other hand, the Government of Uganda has been unable and unwilling to improve the inhuman conditions it has created for the children of Northern Uganda in the IDP camps for over a decade now. The Government of Uganda deliberately refused to implement a unanimous resolution passed by Parliament of Uganda in 2004 to declare Northern Uganda a disaster area.

On many occasions the Government of Uganda deliberately derailed the peace process in Northern Uganda at critical points. For example, the President of Uganda Mr. Yoweri Museveni gave a 7-Day Ultimatum to the LRA rebels to come out of the bush in February 1994, when peace was about to be concluded. The 7-Day Ultimatum only marked the beginning of fresh brutalities by the LRA in Northern and Northeastern Uganda. To tell the bitter truth, up to today, the Government of Uganda has not flushed out the LRA rebels from the bush despite the 7-Day Ultimatum to do so.

Rape has been used as a weapon of war against the women, girl-children and people of Northern Uganda. Our wives, daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers have been raped. While their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters and grandchildren were forced to watch humiliated, helpless and powerless. All these have been done to humiliate and dehumanize not only the victims but the whole Acholi and Lango communities. Our own Government in Kampala has framed us the people of Northern Uganda, especially the Acholi, as ‘backward and primitive’, but worst of all we have been framed as collaborators of the LRA that is killing our own children.

Because we have been so demonized, our children have become ‘invisible children’. We have become ‘forgotten people’ and our holocaust has been called the ‘most forgotten humanitarian catastrophe in the whole world!’ We the people of Northern Uganda, especially the Acholi and Langi have become ‘invisible people’ in the eyes of the world. We have therefore been killed and we have died quietly while the Church and the world carry on with business as usual. Why, because our destruction has been accepted and justified since we have been framed and projected to the whole world as ‘demonic’ as the LRA rebels! Thus, the peoples of Acholi, Lango and Northern Uganda have been humiliated, dehumanized, demonized, and stigmatized by our own Government in Kampala on the watch of the Church and the international community.

...

My brief stay on sabbatical in the USA here has helped me to appreciate something fundamental about America. No matter what problems or what failures you may have here as a people, please permit me to say that I have appreciated one thing that truly makes America and Americans great indeed. It is the belief in freedom inherent in fundamental human dignity as people created by God. I have seen this one fundamental belief affirmed across religious, racial or political divides here in the USA. This does not mean that America is perfect. America also has its own problems as we also have our own problems in Uganda, especially in Northern Uganda. But given this fundamental belief in human dignity and freedom that I have seen and admired since my arrival, I call upon you to take this window of opportunity opened by my story and testimony today. I call upon you to stand together in solidarity with us the ‘invisible children’ and the ‘forgotten people’ and the ‘demonized people’ of Northern Uganda. We are the only people in the world today who have been denied the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by both the LRA and the Government of Uganda. I have come therefore to appeal to you, my brothers and sisters, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to make our invisible children of Northern Uganda become visible again. I call upon you to remember our forgotten people of Northern Uganda and to reach out and touch us in Northern Uganda who have been demonized and stigmatized for the last 20 years. I appeal to you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to become a prophetic voice of Jesus Christ in the world today. I plead with you to call upon your Government of the United States of America to use its diplomatic influence and power to stop the genocide in Northern Uganda, as it can be seen in its commitment to ending the genocide in Darfur in west Sudan. I appeal to you therefore, as part of the Body of Christ within the worldwide Anglican Communion, to join hands with us the hurting, weak and vulnerable people of God in Northern Uganda who are also part of the Body of Christ, and contribute generously towards the healing, reconstruction, rehabilitation, revival and regeneration of Northern Uganda. .

Lastly, but not least, I appeal to you, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to join hands with us, the family of the late Archbishop Janani Luwum on whose behalf I speak, all well wishers, and all the people of God throughout the Anglican Communion and the world at large to celebrate the 30th Commemoration of Archbishop Janani Luwum, martyr of Uganda, Africa’s 20th Century martyr from Acholi, Northern Uganda. The celebration will take place at the martyr’s gravesite in his childhood home of Mucwini, Kitgum Diocese, Uganda, next year in February 2007.

I thank you all in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.