Procrastination at a War Crimes Trial--Kwoyelo's last day in court

Photo credit to JRP

This morning I woke up with one goal--I would finish a draft of my next chapter. Then I got a phone call that confirmed the rumor I'd heard yesterday: what was expected to be the last day of former LRA Commander Col. Thomas Kwoyelo's trial would be today. All of the International Crimes Division of the High Court in Uganda and the accused were on their way from Kampala to have the court session here in Gulu. So I thought--what to do? on the one hand, history in the making, on the other, my self-imposed deadline that I really ought to keep (especially since I'm going to Karamoja for some non-thesis-related consulting work next week). Maybe I'll stay up late tonight. History won.

I thought about the event in April of this year when the International Crimes Division had a public outreach session. Many people were concerned about the trial. They were concerned about the independence of the High Court, and the ambiguity behind why he hadn't been granted amnesty like many other former LRA who are back now. He had applied for it, but instead there was a trial. It had created a lot of confusion. Some people were saying that he couldn't have amnesty because he had been captured by the UPDF and only those who surrendered can have amnesty. In reality, the amnesty law has no such limitation. Others were asking why he wasn't being considered a victim since he had been abducted when he was 13 years old (how old he was exactly when he was abducted is reported differently, but he was likely still a "child"). Instead he had been charged with 12 counts and 53 alternative charges amounting to crimes against humanity under the Geneva Convention Act and other Ugandan penal law.

Because I ought to get back to that chapter, you get my un-edited notes as I jotted them down in court. Perhaps after stewing in the events a little longer I'll share more analysis. But for now, this was how the morning went:

Some of Kwoyelo's relatives came in after we'd been sitting on these hard benches for about an hour after the session was scheduled to start. His sister is blind and seems to have difficulty walking. People murmured when she entered. I wonder how she feels, knowing that all eyes are on her, hearing the hushed and accusatory whispers but not seeing the people who utter them. The courtroom is full. I'm squeezed on a bench with staff of a Transitional Justice NGO, police and other people from the community. The door of the defendant's chamber finally opened. Kwoyelo entered wearing a green button-down shirt, his hair combed back. He looked around the room. He's sitting between prison gaurds in the aisle in front of me and four people over to the right. Less than 2 meters away. He keeps turning around and searching the crowd. He met my eyes but not for long. I think he's scanning thre room for familiar faces. Is he hoping for the presence of friends? previous comrades in arms? Sympathetic expressions? Or maybe he is hoping not to see certain people? There is one man wearing a T-shirt which says "right beside you brother." I wonder if it was an intentional show of support or just happenstance of the man's wardrobe. Former LRA Brigadier Banya is here. I saw him outside though I haven't spotted him in the courtroom yet. Former LRA Ray Apire is in the back corner. Kwoyelo's sister is sitting behind me. Maybe that's why Kwoyelo keeps looking past my shoulder. He does not have an unnerving gaze. He doesn't seem nervous. Alert. He seems alert--more than other war criminals whose trials I have attended who looked simultaneously proud and bored--sometimes downright sleepy. Not Kwoyelo. I'm reading Hannah Arendt again right now. Not that he's an Eichmann, but sitting here does make me ponder her words on the banality of evil.

Twenty minutes later his mother came in. A common looking Acholi mother with a scarf on her head, wrinkled eyes and plastic green beads around her neck. I think his sister and his mother are the only barefoot people in the courtroom. He looked happy when he saw her although he didn't smile and they did not meet eyes. She is moving her lips inaudibly. I think she's praying. I'm told they are supportive of him and hope to welcome him home but they've endured a lot in the past 20 years including government intimidation. A clerk stood up and asked us if anyone had questions we'd like to ask the judges. They asked in English and didn't translate. No one responded. Everyone is rising. The judges enter and we sit down. The judge said they would provide clarification on some of the dates and events in the trial and then proceed with the matter before the court. He continued, they had referred the case to the Constitutional Court on July 5th when the judges granted the request of the defense on the grounds that the trial was unconstitutional because it was discriminatory of the Amnesty Commission and the Director of Public Prosecutions not to respond to Kwoyelo's amnesty request. The Constitutional Court had ruled on September 22nd that it was indeed discriminatory and therefore the trial was not constitutional and should stop. The judge is taking care to explain why several weeks elapsed before this session (he was on vacation) and assuring everyone that there was no intent to delay the matter.

And then without any further delay, he said, "We hereby cease the trial. And order the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Amnesty Commission to comply with the Amnesty Act." He pounded a gavel. We all stood. The judges left. Kwoyelo left. We all left.

(Justice and Reconciliation Project has a lot more information, analysis, pictures, commentary, etc. etc. on their website. Thanks for the photo guys! Oh, and you can see the T-shirt I mentioned in the background).

Babies' Justice

Maybe it's the effects of living with Judah that I'm all the more fascinated and amused by this article in the NY Times. Perhaps we're born with a universal desire to see "bad guys" get punished?

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

You can read the rest of the article here

The article actually sparks some more provoking questions, like: Is the core of "justice" and morality universally impartiality as the article suggests? Could it be some other trait that enables the most harmonious functioning of any given society? Or is the replacement of impartiality for harmony a sign that societies have lost sight of the truth we were born with?

Land of outlawed plastic bags...1000 hills...and genocide

by: Holly

A week in Rwanda was filled with a handful of meetings with people working on reconciliation or transitional justice issues. I met with a couple of local NGOs, folks from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, a Gacaca judge, and a victim's rights advocate. Besides the meetings, I had the sobering privilege of spending a few hours in the genocide museum/memorial and visiting two of the genocide sites in more rural areas outside Kigali. It was a time of reflection on the 800,000 lives that were ended during 100 terrible days in 1994. Appropriately, I was disturbed by much of what I saw. Not in a despairing way--because throughout the time there was a deep sense that I was witnessing something which had past and that today is a different day.

In the genocide memorial, perched on one of the thousand hills Rwanda boasts (and they should be proud, the hills are truly lovely)I noted the way the information was presented. Much of it I knew but I enjoy seeing which details are given priority and speculating about the interests involved in those decisions. Looking at photos--babies in bathtubs, young couples wedding, grandmothers bouncing toddlers, cool looking young men sporting the latest fashion, business men, farmers--I felt the value in being a witness to what happened to them. Somewhere in the exhibit the genocide was called, "the worst excesses of human behavior." A quote on a wall read, "There will be no humanity without forgiveness. There will be no forgiveness without justice. But justice will be impossible without humanity." Yollande Mukagasana. Another one said, "If you had really known me and known yourself you would not have killed me."

Before I walked out on the gardens and mass grave on the hill I went through a section devoted to children. It was full of portraits and bits of information about the kids, including the way they died. A photo of a girl with big pretty eyes, cause of death: stabbed in the eyes. A baby with curly hair--my mind flashed back to earlier in the day, I saw a little boy that looked just like him while I was drinking coffee, cause of death: smashed against a wall. Chanelle was 8 and her favorite song was, "My Native Land Which God Chose For Me." She was killed with a machete. Surely, that's not what God chose for her.

What a strange world this is, where I can witness such grave crime and suffering and an hour later be pleased with a coffee cup that was warm, served with whipped cream and good customer service unheard of in Uganda. Where I look forward to a week of luxurious celebration on white sand beaches on my 5 year anniversary trip. Is this really the same planet where babies are smashed and dull machetes end the lives of our neighbors at our own hands?

Many people were killed in churches where they had crowded hoping to find santuary. I visited two churches, Ntarama and Nyamata. In Ntarama church five thousand people lost their lives. The woman who showed us the place spoke broken English. When I walked in the door immediately in the entrance are shelves of skulls and bones sorted and stacked. The late afternoon sun cast light through the doorway and two windows--expanded by the grenades used to enter the church during the genocide. The woman said, "This was church."

I looked at the remnants of the congregation--the dry bones and I thought, "yes, this was the church." I felt sick and didn't know if it was the thoughts in my head imagining that day or the smell of lost lives that somehow still hangs in the air and clings to the musty and bloodied piles of clothes removed from the dead.

In Nyamata church ten thousand people died. Though it is more sanitized and the bones kept in glass cases, there are blood stained walls and the altar cloth remains. I could hear birds in the trees outside and the voices of children too young to remember the terror of those 100 days running home from school. How did this alter cloth soak up so much blood from the church floor with the statue of Mary looking on?

Outside the church I went into a hole in the ground, a deep hole with the bones of another 40,000 people who were killed in the town surrounding the church. I could barely breathe. It is a valley of death. I didn't think I could do it, I felt like I'd be suffocated from the pain. But out of respect for the survivor that was showing us the place, I descended the steep concrete stairs. Another grave was put for 100 people who were thrown in the pit latrines. The place had cleaned up death. I hope they never sanitize the first church. Genocide can't be made more palatable for the comfort of our memories. We need to see it for the nightmare it is.

In the memorial, looking at the portraits of children, in the churches, in the graves--I just kept wanting to apologize. A constant, "I'm sorry" was in my mind and on my lips. And then I asked myself, "who am I saying sorry to? the dead? the survivors? the families? God? humanity? And on behalf of who? the genocaidaires? the international community? humanity?" I realized there was no who. The distinctions and independent units seemed somehow irrelevant. Instead, this happened to us--it is our story. We have killed. We have been hurt. We have been killed. We are broken.

How to Bend a Speer

I’ve found it surprisingly challenging to reconcile hope with critical thinking about current events. I told Ben earlier in the week (on our date night, which we do every week and it’s so great!) that I was having this struggle and as we talked about the dynamic of hope the thought occurred to us that perhaps it was so hard to reconcile the desire not to blindly wait for something that was not going to happen and not giving up on it because we had a wrong view of hope. Maybe hope isn’t convincing yourself to think that something good is actually the most probable outcome, but believing that it should happen and that the good thing you hope for is closer to what God intended—closer to original design. With this little shift in my thinking it’s been easier to reconcile my mind and heart while I achingly long for peace in Uganda and reason through the complexity of the ongoing peace process. People want it so much, I want it so much. The emotional investment in this process is deep. You can see it on people’s faces. After 20 years, God, let this be the end—if not now when? When you talk to most people and ask them about what they think about the process the answers are on the tip of every tongue “I just want to go home,” or “I just want my sister to come back from the bush, that’s all I want.” I’m often humbled and baffled by the unflinching hope that many in the north express—but I do wonder, everyone has their breaking point, if this process fails will they reach it?

I spent most of this week with a delegation from MCCs advocacy offices from DC, Ottawa, and the UN office in New York as well as from the Africa and Peace departments in Akron. It was refreshing to be with them, to experience Uganda with them, and to discuss how we can better support the peace process through advocacy. We had a series of meetings with people from the groups of cultural and religious leaders who have been supporting/observing, military, NGO community, people in IDP camps, people on the monitoring team for the cessation of hostilities agreement, observers of the process from Juba, and others. The views they had, the messages they wanted to send were diverse, and rather than give my own ideas I thought I’d capture a few from what I heard: (paraphrased)

Why is the international community silent? The West is too silent, not showing oneness with Africa. If this conflict was happening somewhere else there would have been more support from the US. (Religious leader)

The incidences of violence around Juba reported in the media are not UPDF and LRA. Most incidences that have taken place have been the result of misinformation. (Monitoring team member)

I think that the government is trying to save face and that the LRA are rebuilding. There is a lack of commitment to relieve the suffering of Acholi people on both sides. They need to build confidence: don’t discuss wounds, don’t praise yourself, the negotiation should include the suffering people because they are motivated to work for peace. Maybe the negotiating teams should visit a camp so that they can get motivated (community leader)

Are you really sure that peace and justice are friends? Who is the parent in this conflict? Parents take all the costs of their children’s misbehavior. Convince the ICC to bend the rules. (Community leader)

What’s needed for peace is restorative justice. This is not a tribal war but crimes against humanity by terrorists. The military method hasn’t succeeded for 20 years. This might work. It is the most hope we’ve had. In the past the LRA wouldn’t eat food provided by the government of Uganda. But now they are accepting food, so there is some trust. (Formerly abducted person)

We want a statement from the Secretary General of the United Nations not only Jan Egeland. Now the Secretary General is leaving, I hope the next one will at least say something. (Religious leader)

Why is Kony so difficult to capture? We have a saying in Acholi, a coward lives longer. But the fighters are there in the bush, for them this is about reorganization. The LRA negotiating team are people who have a power hangover and they are not fighters. They are waiting for it to fail and getting attention and money. If you think I’m lying time will tell. (Military)

Why is Kony so difficult to capture? Because he is surrounded by children. Children are his water. (Community leader)

When I met with Kony, he had 3 messages: 1. He is for peace. 2. Watch and witness who will spoil the process. 3. The suffering should stop and the war should end. He is willing to do Mato Oput (reconciliation ceremony, that means drinking bitter herb) with the community but is not sure how it could be done with the government, since the government is not a tribe. (religious leader)

What specific confidence building measures are needed? UN supportive statements and a visit from the Secretary General to Northern Uganda. The African Union to respond to the call to be on the monitoring team. “Tell off” the government of Uganda to withdraw all troops in Sudan. Media should send positive supportive messages. It should not be a hurried process—there is no hurry in Africa—we need community views and this takes time. LRA needs to listen to the community. Focus on the victims and the costs of more war. (group of cultural and religious leaders)



These all are not exact quotes, but they are the things I remember and scribbled down in my notebook while I listened to people. Someone said, knowledge speaks, and wisdom listens. Trying to be wise, I’m listening--to those who may have accurate information or may be confused and misinformed but who all have a reason behind their words. I have many questions, but one is at the forefront of my mind. In any negotiation, a party’s position is strengthened when their alternative to a negotiated agreement is good. Unfortunately, all the parties have pretty decent alternatives, which may be why we've seen so many walk-outs. As I see it, the degree to which those alternatives are weakened motivation to settle without violence will be strengthened. How do the Juba peace talks become the most attractive option, and how can the alternatives to a negotiated agreement be minimized?

Hopeful Skeptic

by Holly

Cautious optimism characterizes the mood around the peace process for Northern Uganda. That is how I feel anyway. In general, I consider myself a naturally hopeful person, but I want it so desperately for this place that it hurts to allow hope too much liberty—the obstacles to any meaningful peace mean a high risk of disappointment.

We all follow carefully the daily developments in newspapers that unreliably print shadows of truth. We listen to Kony and Otti on the radio. They both apologized “for everything” on two different days within the past weeks on an Acholi broadcast. And I dared to be thrilled at such watershed statements. At the same time, their voices sounded hollow and the words echoed off of so many atrocities. If they were sorry for the abductions, truly, than why do they still refuse to release the women and children?

Otti has said his “wife and children” are part of him and they will all go home together. The women and children are a shield, a bargaining chip, they are still useful—and they are evidence that though they might be “sorry” they aren’t willing to make things right, not yet.

The irony of having men who have committed some of the worst crimes against humanity raising issues that are actually of legitimate concern and are real political grievances of people in the North is sometimes overwhelming and borders on the absurd. A cartoon in the paper depicted new seats being added to Parliament and Kony sat in one of them with a bloodied machete. A nameplate on the table in front of him read: “Minister of Child Rights.”

I read an editorial this morning (by Charles Onyango-Obbo in the Daily Monitor) He says, “If you ask those of us, who support dialogue to end suffering, but are opposed to these pacts with the devil, what creative alternative there is to that, we don’t have an intelligent answer. That’s the real tragedy of Uganda.” I join him, and many others in the fear that, “sleeping with the devil” could produce some very ugly children.

When I passed through Gulu on the way home from Kitgum on Friday I had a drink with the Public Relations Officer for the UPDF in Northern Uganda. I got the party line, or the military line, instead of the medias interpretation of it. He told me the meeting went well with Dominic Ongwen, (one of the ICC indicted) he said Kony was lying when he said they’d been shot at after the cease-fire by the UPDF. He told me about the one abduction that has taken place since the cease-fire. I asked him if he was hopeful about peace. “Honestly,” he said, “It’s hard to tell, I say it’s still a fifty/fifty chance.” I’ve talked with him before—it’s his job to put the best foot of the military forward, and he does it well. So, I was disheartened by his prediction, if he says fifty/fifty, I’m guessing the UPDF is thinking and planning for thirty / seventy—or worse.

Still, hope finds ways of asserting itself. While we were in Kitgum there were hundreds of rebels walking, sitting under mango trees, waiting for others to join them and then continuing. Presumably they were going to the assembly points. They weren’t hostile. They weren’t causing trouble. They were “friendly.” I don’t know whether to let myself get excited or not. It is so delicate, fragile, and precarious. There are so many variables and so many unknowns.

Right now, Angelina, the Chairperson for CPA is moving with a team of others on a National Reconciliation team. The team is meeting with leaders all over the country and while they discuss and reconcile with each other they are gathering consensus around the messages they want to send to the government, the UPDF, and the LRA and to ordinary people in Uganda. She consulted me just before she left on the most recent leg of her journey to Bunyoro. We discussed the dangers of “unconditional forgiveness,” that can encourage impunity and conceal the truth. We discussed the need to convince the ICC that the crimes which have been committed against humanity—not only the people of Uganda--could somehow be redressed in a local context, in the interests of peace, through Roco Wot and Mato Oput. Angelina is admirably reckless with her optimism. While it strengthens my heart, my mind finds some safety in skepticism that guards me against the disappointment that may come.

Independence & Inequality

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from from the consent of the governed…”

This year, we celebrated the declaration of these words, by singing the National Anthem in harmony with Kimbal and Kellen in a swimming pool overlooking the Nile River in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda. We raised our plastic glasses high, and toasted the independence we enjoy. It was the second official Porter / Kurtz family vacation, and if the first two are telling of those to come, they will be full of good conversation, therapeutic laughter, spiritual inspiration through nature's beauty, and wild animals.

After two weeks with TNL we took our first vacation. We stayed three days in the most luxurious and exotic place I’ve been in Uganda. Five hours after leaving Lira we pulled up in a rented beaten up old car that spewed lung-fulls of dust and exhaust into our faces at every bump—I was almost embarrassed. Then the doorman literally jumped toward us with a huge smile and greeted us with, “Welcome to paradise!” This was followed by cold washcloths for the dust and passion fruit for our dry throats--served on a silver tray. Then we were led to rooms with a classic safari flair with draping old fashioned mosquito nets and a sliding door that led to a patio two steps away from the pool with a swim up bar. Beyond that the Nile ran through a valley of exotic trees, flowers and grasses inhabited by the wildlife we were yet to see (lion, wildebeast, elephants, varieties of monkeys, hippoes, crocodiles, giraffes, kob, etc).

I could barely breathe it was so beautiful--and felt so far—so distant from the community I work with every day, not only the community, but even my colleagues. This place was of another world—out of reach by real Ugandan life and people, a gated protected phenomenon reserved…for who? We saw few African guests—and fewer Ugandans. It was full of short-term missionaries. Having been one of them on more than one occasion myself I had mixed feelings, but somewhat guiltily, I admit I cringed when I overheard most pool-side conversations and had to bite back stinging words and judgmental statements. Kellen, equally sensitive, reminded us that it is just ignorance and not malice. Likely, they had good intentions and good hearts. There is really only so much you can learn in a short time in a country and we all come with our own cultural lenses and assumptions. Ignorance is not so irksome as long as it is accompanied with humility. It’s when ignorance shows up for two weeks to teach the rest of the world the “right” way to do things that my blood starts boiling. (I heard one gray haired Southern Belle tell a Ugandan woman in a thick drawl, “We came over hiyar to teach y’all how to be leaders. Because if we don’t y’all do’ know haow.”)

I have a growing feeling of frustration and quiet outrage over the social assumptions made about black and white.

Besides the clientele, there was something else on our vacation that sparked this tension: the art. It fed a complex of inferiority/superiority. The art fit the overall ambience reminiscent of the early European Explorers on the African continent and depicted much historical drama surrounding the exploration of Murchison Falls, named after the President of the Geographical Society. Before Europeans, the name was derived from the evil spirits believed to be manifest in the Tse tse flies (which are vicious little biters, it’s no wonder they are thought malevolent). There were a series of ink drawings depicting white explorers, usually being hailed or served by scantily clad African men and sometimes shown observing while the Africans in their employment were paid to kill other Africans. One such picture had a caption underneath that referred to the men being killed as, “forest dwarfs.”

This is history. It shouldn’t be hidden. But this display glorified the racist treatment of Africans. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for such drawings to be accompanied with something acknowledging guilt or a memorial to the victims of the European Explorers ambitions—not framed on the walls of a lodge to make the latest waive of European (and American) Explorers think it is quaint to animalize the African people? In what ways did I participate in the continued exploitation between white and black by silently observing the art, enjoying the ambience, and not even voicing my discomfort to the management? It fed what I believe is a proper response of white woman’s guilt.

In Uganda, issues of race do not feature quite so prominently as they do in many places—even the U.S., in Denver, and in neighboring Kenya—the social divisions and assumptions of unequal power relationships are more on the forefront of social consciousness. It is more sensitive, or our radar is more in tune. In contrast, in Uganda it feels like most people assume the best intentions about their white American and European friends. I have never felt that my words or actions were being scrutinized to detect racism. But the divisions do surface, and I am taken off guard and surprised when they do—however small and seemingly insignificant. Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who asked why I don’t dress in African wear and braid my hair. The simple answer is that I haven’t bought new clothes and my scalp is painfully white—I’m a white girl who can’t pull off the look very well. But my friend didn’t get it—if it’s good enough for African women why not for me? So I braided my hair and my Ugandan friends think it is wonderful. Kellen and I did it together. It took twelve hours.

When we picked up the TNL crew, a friend came to the airport with us. We owed him some money for putting gas in the car, so while we were waiting Ben pulled out some cash to pay him back. He got uncomfortable and said no, give it to me later, not here. Neither of us understood why and we thought it was a little strange. He explained that people would think he was doing a service for us. At the time, I was thinking, who cares what some random people in the airport think. But I missed it. I assume it is evident that he is my friend, my peer and my equal. That is what he wants people to see when we spend time with him. At that moment he was keenly aware of what had not crossed my mind—when we are out together people assume he must be working for me.

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” is it so evident? Equality and justice between people requires intentional action, it has to be explained, looked for, fought for. What are evident are relationships characterized by unequal power, choice and access. Governments are instituted to secure our rights but we choose whether to passively acquiesce to their unequal application or to participate in making things right. A friend emailed me recently and suggested that justice and hope were intricately intertwined. Maybe that is because we can’t work for justice without a vision of what it is and some sense that it is possible and we have a role to play. Despite trying to orient my occupation to the end of justice, on a daily basis I struggle to find ways to do justice and avoid perpetuating injustice.