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Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2007 10:17:50 -0700
From: Dennis & Hazel Young
Subject: UGANDA: We're from the government, and we're here to help you.
From NRA's America's 1st Freedom, Jan, 2008
(Link to this article is probably tem****ary, but a permanent link to this
article will shortly be posted at the authors' Independence Institute web
sites. Happy holidays and a good 2008 to all on this list! - P.G.)
UGANDA: We're from the government, and we're here to help you.
by DAVID B. KOPEL, PAUL GALLANT & JOANNE D. EISEN
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?ID=267
While the United Nations works diligently to curb the Second Amendment
rights of Americans, it is turning a blind eye to abused Karamojong
tribesmen fighting a brutal government to keep their only means of
self-defense.
International gun prohibition groups are working hard and successfully to
push an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) through the United Nations. They claim
that
the reason the treaty is needed is that arms are often used to violate
human
rights.
True enough. One need only look at Burma, where the military dictator****p
has been torturing and killing Buddhist monks and other pro-rights
activists. Burma, by the way, has a strict gun control law dating back to
1951: The president can ban any gun by fiat, and any person possessing a
banned gun is presumed guilty of high treason and must prove his
innocence.
One thing that the media doesn't tell you about the Arms Trade Treaty is
that an im****tant goal of its proponents is an international legal ban on
the sale of arms, including components for making guns, to Israel. Control
Arms is a gun control lobby jointly created by the International Action
Network on Small Arms (IANSA), Amnesty International and Oxfam. In
November
2006, Control Arms issued "Arms Without Borders," a do***ent setting forth
the case for the Arms Trade Treaty, and describing Israel as one the
countries that the ATT would target.
Nor does the media point out that another target of the ATT is the United
States, since our gun and self-defense laws are-according to the UN Human
Rights Commission-violations of international human rights. American crime
victims and police officers can use firearms to defend against non-lethal
attacks, such as attacks by rapists, armed robbers or home arsonists. Yet
according to the UN, allowing a woman to save herself from rape by
shooting
the rapist is a human rights violation.
But the most glaring omission in the discussion of the Arms Trade Treaty
as
a human rights tool is the complete silence about how gun control has so
often been used to violate human rights. Consider, for example, what's
going
on right now in Uganda.
The borderlands of northeastern Uganda, northwestern Kenya, southeastern
Sudan and southwestern Ethiopia are occupied by the tribes of the pastoral
Karamojong people. Cattle herds are the center of their culture, and
provide
the major source of dietary protein from milk, blood and meat. Wealth and
local political power are based on the size of one's cattle herd. For
countless generations, cattle rustling has been a traditional Karamojong
pursuit.
The UN and its disarmament cronies have recently claimed that the
availability of modern arms has made cattle raiding deadlier and that
civilian gun owner****p is the root cause of the area's problems.
Not so, replies Ben Knighton, who is dean of the research program at the
Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, and author of the book The Vitality of
Karamojong Religion: Dying Tradition or Living Faith? Knighton argues that
the Ugandan army's gun confiscation program is itself the major cause of
violence.
Even Kilfemarian Gebre-Wold, former director of a voluntary gun surrender
program sponsored by Germany's Bonn International Center for Conversion,
forthrightly acknowledges that "though many pastoralist households have
small arms, the rate of crime and violent incidents is not high in their
community ... the density of weapons does not mean automatically the rise
of
gun-related violence."
Unfortunately, these humanitarians do not make policy. Milton Obote,
Uganda's first prime minister, imposed a nationwide ban on the civilian
possession of firearms in 1969. General Idi Amin later overthrew Obote,
and,
thanks to Obote's previous gun control work, was able to perpetrate
genocide, killing hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, especially in
Karamoja.
The Karamojong tried to fight back using steel tubing from furniture to
fabricate crude firearms.
"the Karamojong had learned that cows and guns are equally indispensable -
a
gun needs to be readily accessible in order to protect one's herd. Obote
retaliated by using his army and secret police to brutalize the tribes."
The Tanzanian army invaded Uganda and overthrew Amin in 1979. While Amin's
army was collapsing in the face of the Tanzanian invasion and the
subsequent
chaos, the Karamojong found easy access to deserted government armories
filled with modern weapons.
Julius Nyerere, the dictator of Tanzania, restored Obote as dictator of
Uganda. Obote quickly resumed his attempts to disarm the Karamojong. His
efforts were often forcefully repelled, because the Karamojong had learned
that cows and guns are equally indispensable-a gun needs to be readily
accessible in order to protect one's herd. Obote retaliated by using his
army and secret police to brutalize the tribes.
In 1984, the Ugandan and Kenyan armies collaborated in Operation Nyundo
("Hammer") to eliminate armed herders seeking cross-border safety. Lepokoy
Kolimuk, a village elder in Kanyarkwat village, Kenya, said the soldiers
were "wild beyond humanity." The number of human deaths remains unknown.
Twenty thousand cattle were rounded up and starved to death. Nevertheless,
Operation Nyundo failed to disarm the Karamojong.
In 1986, strongman Yoweri Museveni toppled Obote and continued the violent
firearms confiscation. The army, with the wildly inaccurate title of
Uganda
People's Defence Forces (UPDF) abused civilians by looting supplies and
raping women. The UPDF's actions confirmed to the Karamojong that their
only
protection from government predators with guns was keeping defensive guns
themselves. The resistance was so great that Museveni tem****arily
abandoned
his disarmament efforts in 1989.
Yet prompted by the UN, Museveni got back into the gun control business in
2001, with a voluntary gun surrender program. The program expired on Feb.
15, 2002, and only 7,676 guns (out of a conservatively estimated 40,000 in
Karamojong hands) were collected.
In order to confiscate the rest of the firearms, the army re-commenced
what
the international gun-ban lobbies euphemistically call "forcible
disarmament." Rape, torture and the destruction of homes after systematic
army looting became commonplace.
Father Declan O'Toole, a member of the Mill Hill Missionaries, asked the
army to be "less aggressive." Just a few days later, on March 21, 2002, he
was murdered by UPDF soldiers. The murderers were apprehended and executed
before they could reveal who had given them the order to kill Father
O'Toole. Uganda President Museveni blamed the Karamojong, claiming, "The
best way to stop such incidents in [the] future is for the Karamojong to
hand in their guns to eliminate any justification for the UPDF operations
in
the villages."
In the northern district of Kotido, the Ugandan army engaged armed
civilians
and captured about 30 rifles on May 16. Thirteen civilians and two
soldiers
died - one person dead for every two guns confiscated. Thousands of
residents were displaced because their homes were torched by UPDF troops.
By mid-July of 2002, the total number of guns recovered by the government,
from both the voluntary and forced gun surrender programs, had reached
nearly 10,000, leaving tens of thousands of guns still in Karamojong
hands.
Museveni had promised to increase security for people who gave up their
guns, but that promise proved empty. The disarmament only created a new
group of victims, who were preyed upon by those who still had firearms.
There were many instances of violence against the disarmed, by both
civilians and soldiers. After homes were bombed and crops were destroyed,
thousands of tribespeople fled across the border to Kenya. About 80,000
more
people were internally displaced.
Despite all the suffering inflicted on the Karamojong, the disarmament
program failed. In 2002, the pro-government Ugandan newspaper New Vision
acknowledged that the Karamojong were now "purchasing more guns to
replenish
those either voluntarily handed [over] or forcefully recovered by the
government."
Another Kenya-Uganda military assault on Karamoja's gun-owning villages
was
launched in 2005, but in 2006, Col. Phenehas Katirima, chief of personnel
and administration in the UPDF, admitted, "Brand new guns from western
Europe, across the Mediterranean and the Middle East have been seen in
Karamoja."
Because of the human rights atrocities, the United Nations Development
Programme tem****arily suspended its funding of the Ugandan development and
voluntary disarmament programs. (The UN had never funded the military
program, except to the extent that money is fungible, and foreign aid is
often diverted by corrupt governments.)
Still, the Ugandan army's campaign persisted. On Oct. 29, 2006, the UPDF
attempted to disarm the village of Lopuyo, but was repulsed after an
8-hour
battle with armed Karamojong. Army spokesman Major Felix Kulaije stated
that, in the course of retrieving firearms, "we went there peacefully in a
cordon and search operation." However, the villagers told a more harrowing
story. The army surrounded the village and began to question and torture
young men. Still, few guns were recovered, and the tribesmen began to
attack
the UPDF.
The UPDF then launched retaliatory raids on the Karamojong using a
helicopter gun****p, but found that they no longer had complete control of
the airspace. Some of the new weapons the Karamojong had acquired were
capable of hitting aircraft.
On Nov. 10, 2006, the UN news agency Integrated Regional Information
Networks (IRIN) re****ted that the village of Kadokini was targeted. "UPDF
tanks then drove through the village cru****ng and damaging properties,
including huts and granaries." The result was three deaths, seven acts of
torture and five guns confiscated by the army. Many similar attacks have
also been re****ted by the UN and local newspapers.
"the UPDF continues to engage in acts which ultimately result
in human rights violations, including killings, injuries, torture, damages
and destruction of property and livelihoods."
Yet the UN - which seems to be more in favor of gun control schemes than
opposed to gross human rights violations - has not demanded that Museveni
reign in his troops. Instead, according to the UN's acting humanitarian
coordinator in Uganda, Theophane Nikyema: "The United Nations ... appeals
to
Karamojong communities to refrain from violent responses to law and order
efforts." With alliances forming among the tribes in order to defeat their
common enemy-their government-it does not appear that they are willing to
disarm, but are instead preparing for further violent resistance.
The UN's news service did admit on May 30, 2007, that, "Intermittent
efforts
to disarm, sometimes forcibly, up to 20 million pastoralists in the Horn
of
Africa, who are believed to possess 5 million firearms, have failed ...
and
forcible disarmament has not worked."
It's doubtful that a single Karamojong man or woman has ever heard of
former
NRA President Charlton Heston. Yet the Karamojong people plainly share his
sentiment: "From my cold, dead hands."
In the meantime, the Ugandan government continues its own efforts to
increase the number of cold, dead hands among the Karamojong. Ugandan Gen.
Aronda Nyakairima states that the UPDF is ready to use "any available
means"
to get civilian guns. According to a re****t of the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, "The UPDF continues to engage in acts which
ultimately result in human rights violations, including killings,
injuries,
torture, damages and destruction of property and livelihoods." The UPDF
attacks take place not only in Uganda, but also in Karamojong regions of
Kenya.
The UN personnel who have re****ted on the human rights abuses in Uganda's
gun control campaign deserve respect. It is unfortunate that Control Arms,
Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA have said nothing about the Ugandan
army's gun control depredations against the Karamojong. It's not as if
they're unaware of the problem; we hand-delivered our previous re****t on
the
problem to them in July 2007 at the UN gun control conference. It was
during
the same conference that the UN cut off funding for Uganda-an act that was
not exactly kept secret from the people at the conference.
If the true purpose of the Arms Trade Treaty is really to protect human
rights-rather than to set the stage for arms embargos on the U.S. and
Israel - the treaty will need to address the problem of arms possessed by
armies like the UPDF and the human rights atrocities they perpetrate in
the
name of gun control.
This article is based on "Human Rights and Gun Confiscation," which will
appear in the Quinnipiac Law Review in early 2008, and is available at
www.davekopel.org.
Posted: 12/20/2007 11:51:20 AM
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