When Vincent Otti killed to prove that LRA guns were not rusty

Twenty nine years ago last week, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) under the command of Vincent Otti Lagony, the deputy commander of the rebel outfit, entered Atiak Trading Centre and Atiak Camp where the populace had been forced to settle albeit for different reasons.

According to the paper, ‘Remembering the Atiak Massacre - April 20, 1995’, a product of the Justice and Reconciliation Project, the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Gulu District NGO Forum, the rebels initially enjoyed lots of support among the populace.

“When the LRA came onto the scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its relationship with locals in Atiak was good. The LRA did not engage in forceful abduction, nor did it kill civilians. Instead, LRA soldiers asked local people for food and recruited youth from willing families,” the paper noted.

The government forces, the National Resistance Army (NRA), on the other hand did not have a good relationship with the populace.

“The NRA was accused by respondents of harassing civilians who came to the centre; asking them for information regarding the rebels,” the paper noted.

The balance, however, started changing following the signing on June 3, 1988, of a peace agreement between the NRM government and the rebel Uganda People’s Democratic Movement (UPDM). 

The UPDM and its armed wing the Uganda People Democratic Army (UPDA) had been formed a few months before the Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) of self-styled priestess, Alice Lakwena, was formed.  The force was mainly made up of former soldiers of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) with origins within the Acholi sub-region.

The agreement with government provided for, among other things, the absorption of its former fighters into the ranks of the NRA.

According to the paper, ‘Uganda: Information on a rebel group called the Uganda People’s Democratic Army (UPDA) and its activities during the period 1988 to 1990, and on the extent of its human rights violations’, which was published by RefWorld, a publication of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, between 5,000 and 10,000 UPDM/A members and combatants surrendered and were beneficiaries of an amnesty from the government.

That had a direct impact on the loyalties and allegiances of the population. 

“Civilians were divided and confused. There were those who had sons in the LRA, and those who had sons in the NRA. As a result, local loyalty and allegiance was divided, with some civilians helping government soldiers and others aiding the rebels,” the paper ‘Remembering the Atiak Massacre - April 20, 1995,” says. 

LRA angered
Researchers on the LRA have never been able to put a finger at the point in time when the rebel outfit got angry with the civilians.

The researchers, however, agreed that the rebels’ discovery that some people were collaborating with the government forces and providing information on the rebel’s hideouts and weapons’ caches led to a thawing in relations between the rebels and the population.

That made the rebels turn on the population with an unprecedented level of barbarism. 

Most of the civilian population was forced to leave the outskirts and move into the small trading centre. Others were forced to move into Atiak Camp by the NRA.

Atiak Trading Centre was at the time of the massacre guarded by 150 home guards while the camp was guarded by about 50 NRA soldiers.

The attack
Witness accounts revealed that the LRA attacked and began engaging the NRA and home guards at around 5am. 

It was at the same time that another group of rebels launched a raid on Atiak secondary and technical schools.

In the trading centre, the two forces exchanged heavy gunfire and grenades for about three hours, but by 8am it was clear that the LRA had overpowered the government forces.

The rebels then embarked on a mop up operation that entailed setting huts on fire and looting local shops.

Those who had stayed in their huts were either killed or arrested. Others were captured as they tried to flee to nearby bushes.

Inside the schools, the rebels raided dormitories and lined up the students in the school compound before forcing them to join the people who had been captured from the trading centre and the camp.

Marching to death
The two groups of captives, some of whom had been forced to carry some of the rebels’ loot, including sugar, maize flour and cooking oil, were marched through the bushes, arriving at a stream called Kitang in a small valley called Ayugi at around 11am.

Here they were separated into two groups according to their sex and age. Men and some of the older boys were put in one group, while children below the age of 11 and pregnant and breast feeding mothers were told to stand aside. The group that had women and children was further split into two.

The boys below 11 were to form the next generation of LRA fighters under the direct command of Joseph Kony and Otti. The girls on the other hand, were to join the long list of sex slaves for top LRA commanders.

Lecture of death
Satisfied that his orders had been carried out, Otti came out to address the group, accusing them of undermining the LRA and collaborating with the government.

“You have been undermining our power. Some of you have also been saying that the Lord’s Resistance Army’s guns have rusted – that they cannot kill. Today we have come to show you that our guns are still functioning. I want you to see how our guns can still work,” a witness quoted Otti telling the captives. 

Kill anything that breathes
The men were then ordered to lie facing down. Otti ordered the women to look straight at those people. They were warned against looking away. The penalty would be death.

Otti then ordered his fighters to kill “anything that breathed”: “Then they were showered with bullets. Nobody got up to attempt running away. 

After the bullets were silent, the soldiers were ordered to fire a second time on the dead corpses, probably to make sure. Then they fired a third time to make sure all the people had been shot. 

“Then they turned to us and asked us if we had seen what had happened,” one of the women who witnessed the killings told the Justice and Reconciliation Project.

One of the women witnessed her first born child, her mother in law, her father in law, and her husband killed. She returned home with four children.

Satisfied with his diabolical actions and orders, he turned to the women and ordered them to applaud the work of the LRA. In Ayugi alone, it is estimated that 300 people, including at least 60 students of Atiak Technical School, were killed.

Others had already been killed during the fighting that occurred in Atiak Trading Centre and Atiak camp. Some people have never been accounted for, but events of April 20, 1995, remain one of the worst nightmares from the insurgency that raged on in northern Uganda.