Red-carpet audience for brains behind the war!

Felicien Kabuga, the Chief architect and financier of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda never picked a machete physically to hack people’s tendons and proceed to have a lunch-break while the victims groaned in pain, waiting to finish them off. He did not witness the bizarre pleas of victims, as they bargained to buy bullets for their death, other than being clobbered with nail studded clubs, nor did he carry out any of the other gory acts we have heard and witnessed as archived. His biggest weapon was his radio, RTML and the Kangura newspaper, oiled by his vast business empire across the region.Yet he remains the number one wanted man by the ICT/TPIR, and from his hideouts and his many identities, continues to finance and direct his interahamwe, trading as FDLR, in Eastern DRC.Compare and contrast Kabuga with Ojur, Nyekorach et al, of our LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army).The similarities are very glaring. Brains behind the war, ‘political/ideological’ leadership, diplomatic/propaganda machinery, ethnic hatred mongering, name it. It equally applies to them. And the difference? Kabuga is a wanted genocidaire, while Ojur and company, and are accorded red-carpet audiences!!Arguments of the two ‘wars’ being different do not hold water. What is the difference between Barlonyo massacre and Nyamata massacre, for example? Aboke and other abductions are no different from the documented horrors we have seen and heard of the Rwanda genocide.This leaves many questions begging for answers:-Does the ICC/CPI work on different principles from those of ICTR/TPIR?-Why shouldn’t the ICC indictment include the LRA ‘brains’, the way ICTR did for the Rwanda genocide? -Who determined who to indict and who to let off the hook?-If Ojur et al are not ‘LRA leaders’; in what capacity are they globe-trotting? Mediators? The last time I heard, they were ‘LRA delegates’.-Could this be the reason Kony is acting hostile to them and their sympathisers in Garamba? Either they are LRA leaders or they are biwani LRA!! And on either front, they qualify for ICC indictment!! If Mat Oput is to be incorporated, let it apply to the innocent abducted children and wananchi, the way Gacaca courts are handling the misled of the Rwanda genocide Lest am misunderstood. Am in for peace for the suffering Ugandans in the north, and a comprehensive indictment of all the perpetrators of these crimes is a bigger boost to ending the war than the current drama we are witnessing.Well, unless government knows a thing or two that we ordinary mortals do not, we all have let down the innocent kids and women in captivity, the suffering people in the camps, as we accord state receptions to the architects and perpetrators of their suffering in the name of ‘peace-negotiations’. And talking of red-carpet receptions, an octogerian friend of mine, one the few legal sages in Uganda, tells me it was wrong for the President of Uganda, to meet rebel leaders in his capacity as Head of State! The incident in Juba where Apire and others refused to shake the President’s hand passed for ‘a simple case of bad manners’ in the Ugandan sense, but it was a big embarrassment to the country. Advisors, pliiiz!! Kampala

Opinions

Red-carpet audience for brains behind the war!