The published response:
To the Editor:
In “A Film Star in Kampala, Conjuring Amin’s Ghost” (front page, Feb. 18), you note that Uganda is now “one of the safest and most stable countries in Africa.” That may be true in southern Uganda, but it is a very different reality for the Acholi people in the marginalized north.
For two decades, a brutal rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, has attacked and terrorized civilians and abducted children to serve as soldiers, cooks, porters and sex slaves.
The government herded the population into congested, disease-ridden camps “for their safety,” but has been unable to put the rebels out of business. In the meantime, tens of thousands of northerners have been killed and 1.5 million remain uprooted.
In recent months, peace talks to end the crisis have offered a slim ray of hope, but they are now on the brink of collapse.
In Uganda, only half the population lives in a country where it’s secure enough to film a Hollywood picture. We should not forget the other half.
Patty Swahn
Nairobi, Kenya, Feb. 19, 2007
The writer is the regional director of East Africa and the Horn of Africa for the International Rescue Committee.
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Following are letters to the New York Times and correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman written by FPA and CEGUN members.
I was quite surprised to see the statement by the writer of the Sunday, front page Feb. 18 article, "Film Star in Kampala," that Uganda is one of the most stable countries in Africa. I spent the summer of 2006 in the camps of Northern Uganda, in which 1.7 million people are currently displaced. If you only spent your time in Kampala, you have been blindly misinformed about the rest of the country.
Uganda is not much better since the times of Amin! Since Amin, the government has continued to master the art of silent killing. Not only has the North been terrorized by the LRA, but Museveni's army has managed to herd and force 2 million people to stay in camps with "limited to no" resources.
According the the UN, Uganda has the 3rd highest IDP population in the world. The Ugandan Health Agency reports that at Lacor Hospital, the infant mortality rate is at 172/1,000 live births (the national average is 88/1,000). The maternal mortality rate is at 700/100,000 live births (national average is 506/100,000).
Museveni's government has been receiving billions of dollars from the World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, DANITA, etc. and there are no signs of its use in Northern Uganda. Fever and diarrhea have been listed as the highest contributing factor to death in the camps, which could be easily addressed if funds were released to NGOs and International Organizations to do something. "
A UN staff worker said, "Uganda has been a golden baby of the donors for the last twenty years and now they are suddenly discovering that there are two million people in Uganda living in camps squalor."
It is important that reputable news organizations like the New York Times accurately inform the world of the LRA's atrocities and the level of devastation in the camps so that the lie of "Uganda's stability" is exposed.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Janice Stucke
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Dear Editor,
Jeffrey Gettleman's article ("A Film Star in Kampala, Conjuring Amin's Ghost") was interesting and colorfully written.This piece depicting the star of "The Last King of Scotland" and the film's entrance onto Uganda's stage riveted my attention. I had personally marvelled at Forrest Whitaker's acting performance as Idi Amin and had hoped so strongly that this film would help focus the world's attention on the current situaion in northern Uganda. Not only is Uganda's past shrouded in mystery but so also is its present.
We cannot exhume Amin's ghost but we have the opportunity to yet bring to justice a far more subtle and deadly perpetration of evil. As we focus on Amin and the misdeeds of the past, a living horror is unfolding year by year by year and now decade by decade right before our eyes.
In the formerly bucolic lands of Uganda, north of the river Nile, 90% of an entire population of mostly Nilotic people (numbering around 2 million) have been forced from their homes and herded like animals into more than 200 concentration camps. Here they have lived for more than 10 years in some of the most appalling conditions on the planet today.
The staggering death rates in these camps are not only the result of filth, overcrowding, disease, malnutrition and violence but of the deliberate isolation, strangulation, deprivation, victimization and dehumanization by a government whose rhetoric has likened the situation to insects in a jar with the lid slowly being tightened.
As the adults are slowly dying off, the households headed by grandmothers and preteen children are losing the knowledge and skills to re-establish their homes, their lives and their culture. A despondent priest bemoaned that "everything Acholi is dying." Weakened and traumatized, the people are losing hope their cries will be heard by the outside world. Circumventing the mainstream media, you will find clear and substantiated allegations of GENOCIDE by many highly credible sources.
Under the leadership (dictatorship?) of President Yoweri Museveni the government of Uganda has launched a believable disinformation campaign with rigged and deceptive numbers about HIV/AIDS, schools, Uganda's sham succcess, etc. Even those in the south of the country have little information about the killing fields of the north.
President Museveni, when pinned in the corner, denies, blames and scapegoats. He delights in the vilification of other despots such as Idi Amin and Joseph Kony of the "Lord's Resistance Army." Meanwhile his corrupt puppet government siphons off massive funds from the western world to prop up the "royal family" and Uganda's otherwise faltering economy and to bring massive amounts of arms into the country. Peacetalk after peacetalk has been derailed by the government, leaving the victims with less hope and resources than before.
It is ironic to see America's darling, Yoweri Museveni, strutting down the red carpet with the same henchmen who "guard" the camps. Museveni continues to bamboozle not only Gettleman but Whitaker and much of the rest of the world.
The red of the carpet should symbolize the blood on his hands not only in the north of his country but also in the Sudan, the DRC and Rwanda. Instead of the spotlight of celebrity, would that it were the spotlight of justice shining on him. Why deal with a ghost when we have a real live one right here in our hands?
We must question what national and international interests lie behind the silence of the media and the world's governing bodies.
My plea is to Mr. Gettleman, Mr. Whitaker and the New York Times - You are in such a visible position!! Please, please, please do your research and tell the rest of the story !!!!! A dying people are waiting for your voice.
Thank you,
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Dear Mr. Gettleman:
Unfortunately you are misinformed about the current state of affairs in Uganda. The civil war in Northern Uganda is in it's 21st year. An estimated 1.7 people have been forced into camps by the Ugandan Government. Death rates in the camps are estimated to be 1,000-2,000 per week. Far worse than Darfur. Only 7% of the death rate is attributed to the rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Over 90% are due to the abysmal conditions in the camps.
Jan Egeland, former U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs labels this "The world's most neglected humanitarian disaster." The New York Times tragedy that is Northern Uganda today. I beg of you to cover this story and tell the world the truth about Northern Uganda. and all other media outlets have ignored the
Thank You,
Kim Cullings
www.CEGUN.org
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Carolyn Edson
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Dear New York Times Editor,
I was quite surprised to see the statement by the writer of the Sunday, front page Feb. 18 article, "Film Star in Kampala", that Uganda is one of the most stable countries in Africa. In fact, it is a myth that Uganda is MUCH better, and more stable since the time of Idi Amin. Perhaps the author, had not heard of the war against the Acholi people in the North, as it seems that the "South" of Uganda is not affected by this war, in spite of the many Acholi refugees that have been dispossessed and are settled as refugees within their own country in the abysmal conditions of the Acholi Quarter, which is located in a slum area of Kampala. The "real story" is the up to 2 million incarcerated in the euphemistic " protected villages," so named by the Government of Uganda under President Museveni's policies; where the death rate has been reported by UN agencies, the Internal Rescue Committee, and Uganda's own Ministry of Health as more than 1,000 a week.
This is no normal 20-year war, it is a war with no real battle lines or regiments. It is a war with kidnapping and the use of child soldiers by both sides. Uganda's defense force in fact, was just defended for the use of child soldiers, at a February workshop held by the Uganda Parliamentary Forum for Children. Sixty Members of Parliament accused the government of recruiting underage children and in fact holding an unknown number in a barracks against their will.
Respectfully,
Kathy Smith
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Dear Mr. Gettleman:
I read your NY times article about the official opening of Last King of Scotland in Uganda. Some disturbing thoughts surfaced especially after reading the following paragraph:
"It took some years after Amin was deposed (he died in exile in Saudi Arabia in 2003) for Uganda to pull itself together, but today it is one of the safest and most stable countries in Africa. It is a leader in the fight against AIDS, and such a reliable Western ally that as soon as donor nations suggested sending African peacekeepers into chaotic Somalia, Uganda was the first to volunteer."
I'm not sure where or how you've gathered your information, but it is quite alarming and depressing to realize that journalists like you are writing articles for one of the most popular and respective Newspapers in the world and you do not even realize the current situation and reality of the subject, in this case the country of Uganda...! I honestly believe that inaccurate, ill-informed, incorrect articles like yours actually hinders and undermines the effort, time, energy, and personal sacrifices that Human Rights activists like myself devote to raise awareness about this Northern Uganda crisis.
For your information; the civil war has been going on in Northern Uganda for over two decades, a population of almost 2 million people, specifically in the North (IDMC report, June, 2006), have been packed like animals into concentration camps; over 200 camps according to the report published by Humanitarian Policy Group in December, 2006, where they live in unspeakable conditions, defined by staggering levels of immorality, disease and death, humiliation and despair, awful sanitation and hygiene, massive overcrowding and malnutrition. People are living like animals and they don't have the bare minimum to survive, and not to mention physical, mental, and psychological abuses they suffer. Both the Ugandan military and LRA rebels committed and are still committing willful killings, beatings, abductions, sexual violence against girls, looting and destruction of civilian property.
It is truly a silent, quiet, and soundless Genocide taking place in Uganda. In reality, the Northern Uganda population is slowly and systematically being destroyed. Also, a survey reported by the UN and Ugandan government's own Health Ministry indicated that 1,000 excess deaths occur in these camps every week; recent estimates now indicate around 1,500 deaths per week.
I truly hope that we, faithful New York Times readers, will be able to
read in the near future well-informed and accurate news articles that expose
the true crisis that is currently taking place in Northern Uganda.
Sincereley,
Tim Hardy
www.aiusa.org
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Dear
Editor:
The Last King of Scotland's director recently stated that he'd leave it to Ugandans to "tell the real story." Jeffrey Gettleman must be of the same mind, as evidenced in his assessment of present day Uganda.
Uganda, which is 52% donor-sponsored, was recently fined $10 billion by the International Court of Justice for war crimes and looting in the DRC, while also mired in a 21-year old civil conflict. Citizens in the Northern and Eastern parts of the country have been displaced for over 10 years, mandated by government to live in abominable conditions where an estimated 50,000 people die a year from treatable illnesses.
AIDS rates are on the rise country-wide and the streets of the nation's capital are filled with homeless children.
Uganda's fictions are best relegated to the screen. In fact, for millions, Uganda is hardly "safe," hardly "stable."
Hellen Otii
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