Forced Conscription and Amnesty: Dealing with war massacres in northern Uganda
Grace Akello, PhD
In wartime many men and women commit atrocities sometimes against their own relatives, friends. In northern Uganda, the Lords Resistance Army(LRA) had a peculiar characteristic of deploying and inflicting injuries, killing, abducting and forcibly recruiting own kin into armed groups. In many interlocutors’ narratives there was a depiction of inflicting interfamilial and intrafamilial atrocities. Because of the numerous atrocities committed by both adult and child fighters, the state and humanitarian agencies including Amnesty international followed some legal frameworks like the Amnesty Law to demobilize and reintegrate fighters who forsake armed rebellion, war prisoners captured at the warfront. In this ethnographic study after 10 years of cessation of hostilities, although guns fell silent, anger, fear and need for revenge still gripped people. Former fighters, being on guard and confronting backlash’ when labelled as ‘people awarded both materially and financially for crimes they committed’. Calling ex-combatants ‘amnesty people’ signified community detachment from the so-called peace process which neglected victims’ needs for justice and reparation. In addition, former fighters feared for their lives and revengeful acts from communities where they lived. A substantial proportion of fighters did not live in communities where they were reintegrated, or with own kinship instead preferring to buy land elsewhere. There was fear of revenge and negative community responses inspite of their being sensitized to accept people forgiven by the state and the Amnesty Commission. Thereby, I aim to examine the extent to which legal frameworks including the Amnesty Law in Uganda contributed to the peace process, reparation, cessation of hostilities and reintegration of prisoners of war. Data to support my argument was collected over a three month period with former LRA fighters captured during battle by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces.