Sen. Barbara Boxer Co-sponsored Bill That Strengthens African Genocidal, Homophobic, Dictator

One of the LRA Disarmament Act’s goals is ending the use of child soldiers, but Museveni’s own army has been criticized for having a recruitment age of 13, and Museveni himself bragged about his child soldiers and introduced them in a news video still readily available on YouTube.

[Global: Africa]

California Sen. Barbara Boxer co-sponsored Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold’s LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, even though it strengthens the hand of dictatorial, anti-gay, genocidal Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose human rights record includes not only war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in his own country, Uganda, and in neighboring Congo, but also the criminalization of homosexuality, with a penalty of 14 years to life.

Museveni’s Minister of Ethics and Integrity James Nsaba Buturo was one of the most vocal champions of Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Act, a.k.a. Hang-the-Gays Bill. On June 3, the Ugandan website The New Vision published a report titled “Museveni warns against sodomy,” quoting President Museveni: “The African Church is the only one that is still standing against homosexuality. The Europeans are finished. If we follow them, we shall end up in Sodom and Gomorrha.”

One of the LRA Disarmament Act’s goals is ending the use of child soldiers, but Museveni’s own army has been criticized for having a recruitment age of 13, and Museveni himself bragged about his child soldiers and introduced them in a news video still readily available on YouTube.

The LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act passed the Senate on March 10 this year, the Senate two months later on May 12, and President Barack Obama signed it into law, Public Law No. 111-172, on May 24. Three months after that, on Aug. 26, a leaked United Nations High Commission on Human Rights Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 1993-2003, documented Yoweri Museveni and his army’s collaboration in the genocidal massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus led by Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army in neighboring D.R. Congo, as did the letter produced by International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda defense lawyer Christopher Black, recently published for the first time by Monthly Review Zine, then by Global Research and the SF Bay View. That letter included this passage:

“Rest assured that our plan to continue shall be pursued as we agreed at our last meeting in Kampala. Last week I communicated with our big brother Yoweri Museveni and decided to make some modifications to the plan. Indeed, as you have noted, the taking of Kigali quickly provoked a panic among the Hutus who fled to Goma and Bukavu. We have found that the presence of a large number of Rwandan refugees at Goma and the international community can cause our plan for Zaire to fail. We cannot occupy ourselves with Zaire until after the return of these Hutus.”

The UNHCHR report documents the Rwandan Patriotic Front Army’s massacres of these Hutus upon their return and their massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees and Congolese Hutus in Congo, with the help of Museveni’s army, the Ugandan People’s Defense Force.

Black Star News Editor Milton Allimadi has reported that Museveni was the first dictator in the Great Lakes Region to be guilty of using targeted rape, including male on male rape, to spread HIV to decimate the indigenous Acholi region of Northern Uganda.

The bill, strangely, has no dollar figure attached to it – yet – so it could easily become an open tab for the further militarizing Uganda and further strengthening Museveni’s hand, or it could actually fund recovery in the indigenous Acholi region of Northern Uganda, where Acholi organizations have begged President Obama not to fund any more military action because, they say, that would only exacerbate and further widen the conflict to surrounding regions, as it already has in neighboring Congo.

Or, it could be a bill written and passed into law but never funded.

Unlike many other senators who co-sponsored the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, Barbara Boxer has not yet scheduled a meeting to discuss it with her constituents. To contact her San Francisco office, call (415) 403-0100; LA office, (213) 894-5000; D.C. office, (202) 224-3553.

 
San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Digital Journal, Examiner.com, OpEdNews, Global Research, Colored Opinions and her blog, Plutocracy Now. She can be reached at [email protected].

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