Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} A letter from Fred Kirya, one of our PCPJ members in Africa

THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY (LRA) TERRORISES
Southern Sudan, northern Congo, eastern Central African Republic (CAR), Uganda

In 1986 a Catholic self-proclaimed ‘prophetess’ named Alice Lakwena founded an ethnic Acholi militia in northern Uganda in response to what she believed was the voice of the Holy Spirit ordering her to overthrow the Government of Uganda (GoU). By 1987 Lakwena’s ‘Holy Spirit Movement’ was finished: Lakwena had fled (she died in Kenya in 2007) and some 5000 of her soldiers lay dead.

Under the leadership of Joseph Kony, a spirit-medium and former Catholic altar-boy, the survivors regrouped, forming the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’ (LRA). Lacking popular support, the LRA keeps its ranks filled by abducting children whom they terrorise into submission, indoctrinate and send out to kill and be killed. Around 90 percent of all LRA soldiers are believed to have been abducted as children. This is one reason why the GoU has been reluctant to attack the LRA with lethal force.

Whilst claiming to be the Lord’s army led by the Holy Spirit, the LRA is deeply occultic. It receives support and supplies from the Islamic regime in Khartoum, Sudan. Khartoum uses the LRA as a proxy militia against African Christian, animist and even Muslim (Darfur) communities that reject Khartoum’s Arab Islamic imperialism. As is common in occultism, LRA soldiers routinely collect their victims’ genitals, livers, hearts and the like for use as occult charms (juju) in cannibalistic blood rituals. According to testimonies from defectors and rescued children, Kony routinely enters a trance to become possessed by a spirit—claimed to be the Holy Spirit. If Kony talks while possessed, by repute whatever he says comes exactly true. The spirit reportedly alerts Kony to military movements, instructs him whom to kill and is always hungry for more human blood.

The LRA was decimated by a rash of defections starting mid-2003 and by Operation Lightning Thunder in 2008, a joint exercise in DR Congo by the armies of South Sudan, Uganda and DR Congo. However, a revived and re-supplied LRA is now terrorising the border regions of Southern Sudan, northern Congo and eastern CAR. Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio in remote Southern Sudan recently appealed through Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) for international attention and intervention (ACN 29 Sep 09).

In early September a large band of LRA soldiers stormed into a church in his diocese, desecrated the building and abducted 17 youths. Three escaped, one was later found dead and mutilated and 13 remain in LRA custody. According to Bishop Hiiboro, 12 people were subsequently abducted from a village near Nzara, and six people ambushed in the forest outside Nzara were killed after being nailed to pieces of wood fastened to the ground. Those who discovered the bodies likened it to a grotesque crucifixion scene.

After a spate of similarly horrendous attacks in August, some 20,000 Christians of all denominations across Western Equatoria State, South Sudan, walked more than two miles barefoot in sackcloth and ashes in prayer and silent protest. On 6 October, Uganda’s Daily Monitor quoted Congolese officials reporting that some 3000 LRA soldiers, wearing new uniforms and carrying new weapons, have crossed from CAR into northern Congo and are now advancing towards Sudan. Father Benoit Kilalegu reported from Congo that the LRA attacked Digba on 25 September, killing 22 people with machetes.

Whilst the LRA is actually little more than a rag-tag band of guerrillas, under Kony’s command they have been out-witting and out- running the official armies of Uganda, Southern Sudan, CAR and DR Congo (separately and combined) for some 20 years. There is more to the LRA than mere human evil. In its wake lie millions of mostly Christian traumatised victims in a region where virtually all services, provision of shelter, humanitarian aid, healthcare, education, care of orphans and rehabilitation of victims is provided by the Church.

PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY THAT:
* ‘Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (1 Peter 3:22 ESV)’ will intervene in this conflict as a bulwark against demonic forces, thus enabling the defeat of Joseph Kony, who is the LRA personified.

* supply-lines between the LRA and Khartoum will be severed (Psalm 146:9c). ‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.’ (Psalm 20: 7 ESV)

* God will bless all the churches and Christian communities across the region that are carrying heavy loads of both grief and ministry on account of LRA terror; may God supply all their needs of both provision and healing.

* God will bless central and east Africa with a widespread awakening and revival that would rid the region of occultism and syncretism, promoting justice and righteousness so that the devil will no longer have a foothold there.

What’s the ideology of “Christian fundamentalist” LRA?

The “Christian” extremist Ugandan rebels known as the Lord’s Resistance Army are reappearing in the news with their brutal methods of murder, rape and enslavement but in recent news coverage little is mentioned of the ideology that drives the bible-bashing fanatics.

The extremist group was founded by a former Catholic altar boy from northern Uganda who - like most extremists of all faiths - turned against fellow believers for not adhering to his particular interpretation of the religion. This explains his attacks on rival churches, although sectarian fighting is not something exclusive to one brand of Christian (or even non-Christian) extremists.

He uses biblical references to explain why it is necessary to kill his own people, since they have - in his view - failed to support his cause.
“When you go to fight you make the sign of the cross first. If you fail to do this, you will be killed,” one young fighter who escaped from the LRA told Human Rights Watch.
“You must also take oil and draw a cross on your chest, your forehead, and each shoulder, and you must make a cross in oil on your gun. They say that the oil is the power of the Holy Spirit.”

His “Christian” extremist group is notorious for abducting thousands of children, forcing them to become either soldiers for his radical views or sex slaves.
The LRA rebels say they are fighting for the establishment of a government based on the biblical Ten Commandments.
He is described as a self-styled prophet who believes in Jesus, son of God.

One of Kony’s aides, Moses, was quoted as saying: “Kony is a messenger from God! We follow the commands of the Holy Spirit!”
Moses continues to explain Kony’s reasoning: “If someone has done something bad to you, you have to kill them!”
“Go and read in Matthew, chapter what and what, it is stated that if your right hand causes trouble, cut if off! It is there in the Bible!”
“He taught us how to pray,” one of Kony’s wives said. He had named one of his sons George Bush. “And like the former US president, he also claims to receive personal visions from God.”

In an interview with Vincent Otti, who was LRA second in command at the time, the Christian fanatic was asked about the group’s name and its ideal system of government.
Otti’s response was: Lord’s Resistance Army is just the name of the movement, because we are fighting in the name of God. God is the one helping us in the bush. That’s why we created this name, Lord’s Resistance Army. And people always ask us, are we fighting for the [biblical] Ten Commandments of God. That is true – because the Ten Commandments of God is the constitution that God has given to the people of the world. All people. If you go to the constitution, nobody will accept people who steal, nobody could accept to go and take somebody’s wife, nobody could accept to innocently kill, or whatever. The Ten Commandments carries all this.

LRA leaders appear to regard violence as a way of purging society of impurity; those who die, whether civilians, government troops or LRA child soldiers, are those who are believed to have broken religious commands. Kony uses passages from the Pentateuch to justify mutilation and murder.

Kony launched his rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda in 1987, tapping into political grievances among the northern Acholi people, and infused by a belief he was destined to rule the country according to the biblical Ten Commandments, after establishing a theocratic state.

LRA fighters soon achieved notoriety by turning on the Acholis they claimed to represent, hacking off lips, ears and noses, killing thousands and abducting more than 20,000 civilians, mostly children. The children who have been abducted were often forced to kill their own parents so they have no way back.

Congo had no part in the war until 2005, when the LRA sought sanctuary in the remote Garamba national park after being forced out of northern Uganda and South Sudan.
During two years of subsequent peace negotiations, the rebels were largely quiet, cultivating land and accepting food aid. After talks collapsed in 2008 due to Kony’s refusal to sign a final deal, he ordered his fighters back into action.

Association with the LRA had taken on a new acceptability to the extent that politicians, lawyers, church and civic leaders from Uganda can openly attend the talks as observers or delegates.
Occasionally he became animated – a sudden wide smile and an extended hand – when greeted in Acholi by Ugandan observers from the church and the northern constituencies.
Amnesty International reported that without child abductions, the LRA would have few combatants.
“Men, women, girls, babies, killed with machetes, knives and hoes,” said one witness. “In one village they made mothers put their small children inside grain mortars and pound them.”
People who were abducted into Kony’s forces and later escaped describe him as a crazed religious leader.

But extremists of any faith do not operate in a vacuum and the LRA is said to have had an unlikely alliance with the Sudanese government in Khartoum, who wished to retaliate against the Uganda government for supporting rebels in south Sudan.
The alleged Sudan-LRA cooperation based on mutual interest appears to be reminiscent of America’s alliance to Al-Qaeda during the war against the soviets in Afghanistan.
But the government in Khartoum, though not a 100% US-backed dictatorship like the majority of Arab governments, was nevertheless keen on improving soaring ties with the US, who sided with the south Sudan rebels. This meant there would be less tolerance of LRA by Sudan.

Kony’s options narrowed further in 2005 when Khartoum signed a peace deal with the southern rebels to end their long civil war. Both sides agreed foreign forces – including the LRA – must leave. Kony fled across the border into Congo’s Garamba National Park.
But - ironically - some LRA forces remained in or returned to the areas controlled by mainly Christian south Sudan.
Human Rights Watch accused the mainly Christian regional government of southern Sudan of ignoring an International Criminal Court’s warrants for the arrest of four top Ugandan rebel leaders.

In one occasion, Kony, who was in southern Sudan, had even met the Christian region’s Vice-President, Riek Machar.
Kony had asked the government of southern Sudan to facilitate talks between him and President Museveni of Uganda.

The LRA has killed more people than many other terrorist groups, yet few Americans or Europeans have ever heard of it.
Attacks attributed to LRA have killed at least 188 civilians and displaced 68,000 in Southern Sudan since January 2009, with 137 abductions also reported, according to the UN.

Currently, LRA continue to launch attacks in south Sudan, whose mainly Christian civilian population is itself preoccupied with brutal internal killings.
The violence there has surpassed that in the western region of Darfur, yet again little media attention has focused on that part of the conflict where it is mainly Christian civilians killing each other.

Life with Joseph Kony, leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army
Xan Rice

Of the thousands of girls kidapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Lily Atong and Rose Aneka know the reclusive leader Joseph Kony better than most. They were his wives. Their stories offer a glimpse into life with Kony and the psychological power he exercises.

Atong was 10 and Aneka was eight when they were abducted in northern Uganda during the 1990s. They babysat for Kony for several years before he informed them that they had become his wives.
“We were treated well and there was never any quarrelling,” Atong said. “He gave us training as soldiers on how to protect ourselves, to be very fast in doing things.”
Bullets could not harm them, Kony repeatedly said, according to Aneka. “He warned us to pray, to pray hard. If we didn’t then we could be killed, he said.”

LRA members believed that Kony could predict when Ugandan forces would attack.
“He has devoted himself to God and God reveals to him the future,” said Aneka.
Reputed to have had more than 80 wives over the years, Kony recorded the names and dates of birth of all his children in a ledger. Aneka has two children by Kony; Atong has four and is expecting a fifth.
Kony named their middle child George Bush, telling Atong that the former United States president was “a close friend”.

Atong was freed in 2005 after being captured by Ugandan troops. A year later, she was persuaded to join a peace delegation to convince Kony to end the war. Instead, he abducted her a second time, refusing to allow her return home with the other peacemakers.

Aneka recalled that later, when he was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kony told his fighters that angels appearing in a dream had instructed him to kidnap local villagers. He foresaw Ugandan-led air strikes to destroy the LRA last December, she said, and instructed his wives to make him tea as the gunships approached.
“He said that God had sent him to fight so we should not fear,” Atong said.
“The next morning he assembled everyone and told us that raid was proof that he would have been killed had he signed the peace deal.”

Atong and Aneka were captured by Ugandan forces in Congo earlier this year and are now recovering at a centre set up for rescued mothers run by a charity, ChildVoice International, in Uganda.
“People have written that he is an evil spirit,” Aneka said. “That is nonsense. He has the power to cast out evil spirits.” Asked how she felt about him, Atong looked down and said: “I don’t know.”