United Nations Radio

Displaced civilians in Sudan

Two reports on LRA activities in southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo chronicle a series of brutal attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army. Spokesman Rupert Colville of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights speaks to UN Radio's Patrick Maigua about the attacks which occurred approximately from September 2008 to June 2009:

Colville: During that time, they catalogued the killing of about 1,200 people, the abductions of about 1,400 people by the LRA. In the early period, particularly organized systematic attacks rolling waves of LRA attacks, seven or eight simultaneously on occasion, later on a bit more sporadic and isolated but on-going and still on-going now although the report ends in June .

Maigua: In Sudan, when does the report cover?

Colville: In southern Sudan, It covers pretty much the same period, a slightly shorter period, December 2008 through to March 2009. It started a little bit later there because essentially the people operating in southern Sudan are splinter factions who came out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo after there was military pressure on the LRA there. And some groups of LRA went into neighboring countries into the Central African Republic and into south Sudan. It's smaller scale but equally vicious attacks, rape, brutal rape. Sometimes women are raped and then killed afterwards. Mutilations, slaughter, burning of villages and pillaging.

Maigua: And what is the High Commissioner recommending in view of this report?

Colville: A number of things. But I think the prime one is to pick up and solidify what is already there, which is the leaders of the LRA, that is Joseph Kony, the main leader and several other leaders have arrest warrants against them by the International Criminal Court - 33 charges already against Kony and other leaders - these reports outline probably what could easily become further charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, which are most serious crimes there are. So really the report calls on everyone who can to aid the ICC process, to first of all locate, arrest, bring evidence.

Maigua: Why has it become so difficult to contain or to eliminate the LRA?

Colville: They constantly replenish themselves. A major part of their activity is abducting children and they conduct raids, they kill, they slaughter, they wound, but they also nearly always steal a number of children or teenagers, sometimes grown women as well from the villages and towns that they attack. And then they brutalize these people and force them to kill, they force many of the girls to be effectively sex slaves, they use them as porters, as spies, and totally expendable, you know if they grow weak or whatever, they kill them or just leave them to die. Over the years, there have been quite a few people who have managed to escape from the LRA including recently and a certain amount of clear information about they operate comes from those escapees and it's usually pretty much the same story.

Maigua: But we have seen the peacekeeping mission, the MONUC, together with the army in DRC move into some of these areas but still LRA is able to continue with these attacks. Why is it not able to be contained?

Colville: One of the conclusions in the report on the DRC side of the story basically says you know these military operations weren't sufficiently well planned to deal with the LRA.

Maigua: The catalogue of human rights violations in the DRC is quite huge. Does it get frustrating that there's all this catalogue but there's no effort to bring the war there to an end?

Colville: I think there are efforts but it's such a vast problem. The estimates are that there's something like five million people have died sort of directly or indirectly because of the various forms of war in local fights and massacres since the mid-1990s, just in 15 years or so. And from our perspective perhaps the biggest problem and one reason why this just never ends is impunity. Five million people are killed or somebody killed them - not all of them were killed at the point of a gun -- but large numbers of people have been hacked to death with machetes, murdered, raped, I mean the scale of rape and the nature of the rape in the DRC is quite abysmal.

Producers: Patrick Maigua/Gerry Adams.

(duration: 4'01")