The resilience “Face” of Duculina Akoko (48) a survivor at Lukodi.
“Livingstone! I have a husband. Why are you looking at me lustfully?” Jokes Ms Maria Mabinty Kamara, as she flirts with each and every journalist and stakeholder on ICC matters, who was entering the Gulu Central High School bus. The bus was hired to take people to celebrate International Criminal Court (ICC) day on Saturday, 17th July 2015 at Lukodi village, Bungatira sub-county, in Gulu district, ten miles north of Gulu town. A second bus of Sir Samuel Baker School carried a brass band for the celebrations.
This was where the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels massacred 54 innocent civilians on the evening of 19th May 2004 from the Protected Village, Internally Displaced Peoples’, (IDP) camp.
Ms. Maria Kamara is the Outreach Coordinator for Uganda and Kenya in the Public Information and Documentation Section of the ICC. She was joking with Mr. Livingstone OkumuL-Langol, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the defunct Oyeng-yeng Publications, but now a stringer with Black Star News. Everyone who enters the bus was given a blue T-shirt, a hand band and a white cap bearing ICC logo themed: “Justice Matters”.
Lukodi village is important to the ICC because this is the first site of LRA massacres in Northern Uganda which was investigated and it led to the first suspect, Dominic Ongwen, to be held at The Hague. This comes after ten years of waiting for one suspect from the top LRA indicted commanders to be apprehended.
The ICC indicted five top LRA commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity including sexual enslavement in 2005. These commanders were the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, his Deputy Vincent Otti, Okot Odiambo, Raska Lukwiya and Dominic Ongwen. Only Joseph Kony and Dominic Ongwen are alive while the other three are believed dead now.
Whereas Dominic Ongwen surrendered himself to the Seleka rebels of the Central African Republic (CAR) in January 2015, and is now in custody of the ICC waiting trials, the LRA leader, Joseph Kony is still at large
“We are here to celebrate your resilience for what you have gone through. You all look beautiful. Today is a special day in that the entire world is celebrating the day when the ICC was born in 1998…. It took ten years of waiting before the first suspect of the LRA top commanders, surrendered to the ICC. Let us say never again. Let us say no to impunity. Yes to justice and accountability”. Ms. Maria Kamara told the survivors and victims of the massacre, for which Dominic Ongwen is being charged. She told the people of Lukodi that it may be possible to bring the trial of Dominic Ongwen to Uganda and Gulu is proposed to the venue of the trials.
“The judges are yet to decide where to try Ongwen. We shall let you know where he will be tried”. She said.
I arrived at MEGA FM assembly point at exactly 7.40 am local time as part of the team to travel to Lukodi, ready to go and re-visit the former camp after eleven years. The last time I was there was on 20th May 2004, the following morning after the massacre. I was the correspondent for the National Independent Monitor newspaper in the LRA affected area of Northern Uganda.
At that time, we found dead bodies still scattered everywhere in the camp and some huts were still in smoke. Survivors were still in tears. Many were making arrangements to bury their loved ones killed by the rebels. They were too afraid and traumatized to speak to us (journalists) about their experiences of the previous night. Very few were able to recount their experiences that day.
The temperature on this Saturday was 25 degree Celsius and it was drizzling. One of the ushers gave me a T-shirt where the writing on its back side was inscribed: “To me justice is Ensuring Fairness. That is why Justice Matters.” My colleague, Okumu-Langol had his written on: “To me Justice is Healing. That is why Justice Matters”. There were different messages for every T-shirt.
My first point of call was the monument of the “Lukodi Memorial Massacre on 19th May 2004” site. We found the site with a memorial monument built with the help from a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called Child Voice International. The site was built about thirty meters away from the main road, on the eastern side. Its busy grass was freshly slashed for the day. No flowers were planted around it. A total of forty-seven names were inscribed on a marble plate while a cross stood above it. These were the victims killed who were identified by their relatives and loved ones.
New commercial buildings have sprung up where there used to be grass-thatched huts. One particular sign-post attracted my attention: “Dicwinyi Wot Anyim Association”, which means “Be patience and move forward Association”. The name suggests the survivors’ resolve on resilience, despite lack of support.
The association had installed a Rice hauler, a maize mill and cassava multiplication plot, with funding from Child Aid and Development of Australia, thanks to retired Anglican Bishop Nelson Onono-Onweng who connected the community to the funders.
The bishop is involved in education, school feeding, scholarships, livelihood among victims and survivors, medical camp, sanitation program and improved seeds through his organization: “Bishop Onono-Onweng Foundation”. He is also constructing a Church at the site which used to house displaced people.
“What will ICC show that the people of Lukodi were murdered in the same way God put the “Rainbow sign” during the time of Noah? You should roof the church (shrine) and build a boarding section of the Primary School as a symbol. You cannot pay each and everyone who was affected by the LRA”. Bishop Onono-Onweng told Maria Kamara.
The first person I talked to as I got out of the bus, was a woman I found crying at the market, and was others were trying to comfort her. She was putting on a zebra-colored T-shirt while very many people around her were putting on the ICC blue T-shirts. I had to wait for over five minutes to enable her tears to dry up before talking to her. Ms. Duculina Akoko, forty-eight years old, was actually crying because she missed getting the free ICC T-shirt. Over one thousand people were putting the blue T-shirt. She missed out.
She opened up to me because she thought I was one of the officials distributing the T-shirts and would give her one.
She told me she survived the attack because she had gone to fetch water at a nearby well at the time the rebels entered the camp around six in the evening. Her husband, Oseneri Oryang (sixty years old) also survived because he fell into a new pit latrine which was freshly dug. All their children were schooling in Gulu town and therefore survived.
Today, Akoko survives by engaging in small scale subsistence farming, although she now walks with the help of a walking stick. She does not go to fetch water anymore, but depend on her daughter, Harriet Oyella, a primary six pupil of Lukodi Primary School.
“I survive by digging and planting food crops. If you don’t dig, what will you eat?” She retorts.
Akoko benefited from the government program under re-stocking whereby she was given a long-horned Ankole cow in July 2014. Unfortunately the cow was blind and it died a month later because of hunger since it could not feed itself.
“The pain, suffering and trauma are still fresh after ten years. The ICC is to ensure that the persons who committed crimes do not go aw2ay with impunity. As ICC, we have “Trust Fund for Victims” where forty thousand have already benefited from. Projects to heal the wounds are collective efforts. I will convey your message to the trust fund so that they come to Lukodi”, says Maria Kamara.
Although Akoko missed getting a free T-shirt, she has every reason to smile once again and to put on a face of resilience with lots of hope. Justice is about to be done.
RESILIENCE AT UGANDA’S LRA MASSACRE SITE: LUKODI, 11 YEARS LATER, AND WHY ICC CELEBRATED ITS DAY WITH POMP THERE.
