Another Aboke girl back
Nov 14, 2004
ANOTHER Aboke girl has been rescued by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), after eight years as a captive of Joseph Kony’s rebels.
By Denis Ocwich and Charles Ariko
ANOTHER Aboke girl has been rescued by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), after eight years as a captive of Joseph Kony’s rebels.
The girl (name withheld) is a daughter of the late Ben Pere, a former chairman of the Concerned Parents Association (CPA), a lobby body founded by parents of abducted children. Pere died about four years ago.
Northern region army spokesman Lt. Paddy Ankunda said the girl was among 11 abductees, who escaped last week during an afternoon “hot pursuit†by the UPDF in Palabek, Kitgum district.
“Every time we rescue an Aboke girl, we get delighted, just like every time we rescue any other child,†Ankunda said on Thursday.
Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in October 1996 abducted 139 girls from St. Mary’s College Aboke, a missionary girls’ school in Apac district. But 109 of them were released by the rebels a few hours later, following the intervention of Aboke’s deputy headmistress, Sr. Fassera Rachelles, who daringly followed the rebels into the bush and pleaded with them to release the girls.
Kony, however, refused to release 30 of the girls, whom he took to his camps in Sudan.
Todate, 21 of the girls have returned home, some with babies fathered by rebel commanders.
“Unfortunately, four of them have died and five are still in captivity,†said Els De Temmerman, a Belgian author of Aboke Girls, a book that raises money to pay fees for former abducted Aboke girls and other former rebel captives.
ANOTHER Aboke girl has been rescued by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), after eight years as a captive of Joseph Kony’s rebels.
The girl (name withheld) is a daughter of the late Ben Pere, a former chairman of the Concerned Parents Association (CPA), a lobby body founded by parents of abducted children. Pere died about four years ago.
Northern region army spokesman Lt. Paddy Ankunda said the girl was among 11 abductees, who escaped last week during an afternoon “hot pursuit†by the UPDF in Palabek, Kitgum district.
“Every time we rescue an Aboke girl, we get delighted, just like every time we rescue any other child,†Ankunda said on Thursday.
Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in October 1996 abducted 139 girls from St. Mary’s College Aboke, a missionary girls’ school in Apac district. But 109 of them were released by the rebels a few hours later, following the intervention of Aboke’s deputy headmistress, Sr. Fassera Rachelles, who daringly followed the rebels into the bush and pleaded with them to release the girls.
Kony, however, refused to release 30 of the girls, whom he took to his camps in Sudan.
Todate, 21 of the girls have returned home, some with babies fathered by rebel commanders.
“Unfortunately, four of them have died and five are still in captivity,†said Els De Temmerman, a Belgian author of Aboke Girls, a book that raises money to pay fees for former abducted Aboke girls and other former rebel captives.