Karamoja is not what media portrayed

By Pius Bigirimana

WE have read the story in the Saturday Vision of February 25, Page 7 profiling the Ik community in Kaabong district, Karamoja, in your Golden Jubilee pages. 

The story entitled: The Ik have not seen independence contains erroneous information presented to readers as facts. 

We reckon that those who are not familiar with the entire life and the progress of the people of Karamoja would be led to believe this information as truth. 

The contents of this article were largely drawn from a research report done and commissioned by Center for Conflict Resolution (CECORE), entitled Conflict Early Warning; The Ik of Kaabong District, Dec 2011. This research was funded by European Union and Irish AID. 

However, our findings show that the objective of the research was to identify existing and potential conflict early warning issues affecting the Ik in Kaabong district. With the specific objectives being: 

• To identify and analyse conflict early warning signals among the Ik in Kaabong district. 
• To identify the context of land and water resource control use and management. 
• To assess indicators that the Ik use to monitor threats in the community 
• To identify the pattern of exclusion and discrimination against the Ik community 
• To assess gender experiences of the conflicts affecting Ik 
• To provide action oriented policy recommendations for improvement of conflict situation affecting the Ik. 

While the actual number of participants in the study were reported as 96 (both male and female), from different sub-groups of the community and Kaabong District, the scope of the study was limited to conflict early warning issues affecting the Ik communities. 

With this background, a number of issues and questions arise: What is the aim and purpose of journalists in a reputable newspaper such as New Vision to allege that the Ik have not seen independence as part of the stories fronted by the newspaper to celebrate Uganda’s national Golden Jubilee? Even if this was a legitimate aspect of academic inquiry, why should they use findings of a specific research meant to highlight issues limited to conflict early warning to back such outrageous assertions? 

Nothing in the article refers to issues of independence, governance and representation, territorial integrity, perpetual colonisation or neo-colonisation. 

Where do these journalists obtain the audacity to misinform Uganda, the Global readership and mis-characterise Karamoja? Moreover, they do so in the pretext of disseminating stories about our beautiful country, Uganda, during the blessed period of the Golden Jubilee! 

We shall not delve into the merits and demerits of the conclusions of the actual study by CECORE, as that would be diversionary because the elements of the study have been taken out of their context and applied for a completely wrong purpose. Rather, we would like to point out the miscarriage of journalism that has continued to falsify information from Karamoja in the Ugandan and international press. 

We wonder why the journalists have failed to report the true progress of the people of Karamoja and instead they have continued to perpetuate stereotype prejudice that aim at portraying the people of Karamoja in bad light. 

Although Karamoja is still a long way from achieving desirable state of progress, tremendous improvement is evident in area of security for both people and their property including livestock. We no longer report massive raids as it was just a year ago. 

What we now see are cases of petty theft of property including livestock and issues of general enforcement of law and order in the community that the Government is addressing through various measures. 

Some of these include; establishment of police stations and police posts; deployment of more police officers and over 3,000 Local Defence forces in the entire region including Kamion sub-county where the Ik live. The Government of Uganda supports initiatives of cross-border peace and conflict resolution with the Governments of the neighbouring countries of Kenya and South Sudan. Measures are now in place to curb cross-border cattle rustling and trafficking in small arms. 

It is evident that violence is receding and people of Karamoja are turning to development in order to propel their society forward. This is being done with the support of the Government programmes like NAADS, NUSAF2, KALIP, UPE, USE and food production, as well as interventions of development partners and non-government organisations. 

It is our observation that since the bad news that is usually associated with Karamoja is no longer flowing into the media houses, some “arm-chair” journalists have resorted to regurgitating and/or repackaging old sentiments often backed by file photos to continue misinforming the world about Karamoja. 

For example, this article has a picture of a woman carrying a gun with a caption: “A woman carrying a gun in Kaabong district. Such guns have been used to terrorise the Ik. 

How sure are we that this picture is from Kaabong district, since the journalists do not mention that they personally went to Karamoja? Then there is a picture of a young man carrying a gun while herding cattle with another damning caption; Karimojong warriors move with guns which they use to raid cattle from their neighbours. 

The situation obtaining currently in Karamoja is that nobody (civilian) can now be seen in public carrying a gun without appropriate action being taken by the communities and relevant state organs. 

These are clearly pictures of the past Karamoja and now being used to continue irrigating the negative prejudice about Karamoja and quenching the insatiable appetite for bad news from Karamoja. 

We state with confidence that the people of Karamoja are in the fore-front of re-establishing peace and unity among the different clans and/or tribes in the region. 

They have embraced the national policy of enhancing food security through rebuilding their livestock and adopting other agricultural methods of food production. 

They have embraced education and districts are re-organising to ensure improvement in service delivery. Although there is still a long way to go and there are many gaps and challenges, under the leadership of the Minister of Karamoja and the First Lady of the Republic of Uganda, the people are committed to break new grounds for better quality of life like any other part of Uganda. 

We request the press to become allies of the people of Karamoja first, by stopping perpetuating prejudice, second by appropriating a sense of duty and responsibility to report the truth about the current progress and future aspirations of the people and lastly, by dedicating space and time to propagate the good news that Karamoja is on the rise again and the people of Karamoja will surely appreciate your support in rights and dignity. 

The Ministry of Karamoja is available to support any journalist to access correct information about the current progress in all the districts and in all the communities of Karamoja.

The writer is the Permanent Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister