Lango demands ‘blood compensation’ for relatives killed during LRA insurgency
LRA survivors pose for a photograph with the Lango Paramount Chief-elect, Eng Dr Michael Moses Odongo Okune in Abok Sub-county, Oyam District on June 8, 2024. PHOTO/ COURTESY
What you need to know:
- The traditional ritual which is performed by the council of elders, also serves as a truth telling and confessional forum for a person who has committed crime.
- The traditional ritual which is performed by the council of elders, also serves as a truth telling and confessional forum for a person who has committed crime.
- Healing rituals are performed between clans and tribes in an absence of formal judicial mechanism.
Members of the Lango ethnic group have demanded that the government pays “blood compensation” for relatives killed during the insurgency in northern Uganda.
This sought after compensation will benefit families that lost loved ones in the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels some 20 years ago.
Eng Dr Michael Moses Odongo Okune, Lango Paramount Chief-elect, said there should be some form of compensation for women, men and children massacred at Abok, Baronyo, Abia and Amononeno Internally Displaced Persons IDP) camps.
This is because the government failed in its mandate of protecting lives and properties during the two-decade civil war.
“The government should pay blood compensation for all persons killed from IDP camps scattered across the Lango Sub-region because it failed to protect our people and their properties, making them vulnerable to the attacks perpetrated by the LRA rebels,” Dr Odongo said during the memorial prayer for 28 people killed by the LRA at Abok IDP camp on June 8, 2004.
“Any war against the civilian population sabotages economic development, and its lingering effect increases poverty, diseases and domestic violence at household level.”
In 2011, President Museveni told leaders from Lango that his administration could not pay for all the lives lost during the conflict except compensation for livestock lost.
What blood compensation entails
Blood compensation is a Lango traditional justice system which has been used over decades to settle minor crimes in the community such as killings in the neighbourhoods.
Such healing rituals are performed between clans and tribes in an absence of formal judicial mechanism.
Sessions are held out of doors and are open to anyone willing to testify about crimes committed. A committee of locally elected officials oversees an open air gathering.
In this case, the Attorney General of government representatives and the offended (each of the families that have lost relatives) will bring one sheep. They put the heads of the two sheep facing one another. The sheep are cut and the meat is shared by the two parties, showing that they have forgiven one another.
After this ritual, the government will then pay seven cows to each of the offended families to make amends for the crime against the civilian population.
The traditional ritual which is performed by the council of elders, also serves as a truth telling and confessional forum for a person who has committed crime.
On June 8, 2024, war survivors in Abok Sub-county said very little had been done to support them to heal from the wounds caused by the conflict between the LRA and the government forces.
Mr Phillip Ogile, the Abok LC3 chairman, appealed to the government to design a special programme for survivors of the conflict in the north.
‘Ongwen guilty of killing people in Abok’
Meanwhile, on February 4, 2021, Trial Chamber IX of the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Dominic Ongwen guilty for a total of 61 comprising crimes against humanity and war crimes, committed in northern Uganda between 1 July 2002 and 31 December 2005.
The convicted Ongwen, who is serving currently his 25-year jail term, was found guilty of crimes, among others: attacks against the civilian population as such, murder, attempted murder, torture, enslavement, outrages upon personal dignity, pillaging, destruction of property and persecution; committed in the context of the four specified attacks on the IDP camps (Pajule (October 10, 2003), Odek (April 29, 2004), Lukodi (on or about May 19, 2004) and Abok (June 8, 2004).
‘Reparations order’
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on February 28, 2024 ordered reparations for victims of Dominic Ongwen, an ex-child soldier turned commander in the LRA.
The court’s order, the first in the Ugandan situation, awards collective community-based symbolic payment for each victim.
Ongwen's liability for reparations was set at €52,429,000 (about Shs213, 026,620,882) for approximately 49,772 potential victims.
