Religious leaders urge Kony to release kids
Mar 30, 2009
THE Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative has asked the international community to pressurise Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony to release children still in captivity.
By Dennis Ojwee
THE Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative has asked the international community to pressurise Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony to release children still in captivity.
The Archbishop of Gulu Archdiocese and chairman of the initiative, John Baptist Odama, made the remarks on Friday during a peace memorial prayer organised by the Invisible Children, an NGO, at Lukodi internally displaced persons’ camp on the Lukome-Apyeta road, Bungatira sub-county in Gulu district.
The prayer was attended by French ambassador Rene Forceville, DR Congo ambassador Yav Tshi Komb Juvenal and US political and economic section chief Kathleen Fitzgibbon.
The ambassadors laid a wreath at the monument of the people who were massacred in Lukodi during the LRA war. A total of 23 people were executed and 23 others burnt in grass-thatched huts in 2004.
The out-going Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda Diocese, the Rev. Nelson Onono-Onweng, urged Kony to surrender and end the 22-year-old war.
The country director of Invisible Children, Jolly Grace Laker-Okot, said the prayer indicated that peace was returning to the sub-region.
The dignitaries demolished two grass-thatched huts as a sign that it was time for the IDPs to return to their homes.
The prayer was followed by a night candle lighting at Kaunda Grounds, where various artists performed songs about peace.
THE Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative has asked the international community to pressurise Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony to release children still in captivity.
The Archbishop of Gulu Archdiocese and chairman of the initiative, John Baptist Odama, made the remarks on Friday during a peace memorial prayer organised by the Invisible Children, an NGO, at Lukodi internally displaced persons’ camp on the Lukome-Apyeta road, Bungatira sub-county in Gulu district.
The prayer was attended by French ambassador Rene Forceville, DR Congo ambassador Yav Tshi Komb Juvenal and US political and economic section chief Kathleen Fitzgibbon.
The ambassadors laid a wreath at the monument of the people who were massacred in Lukodi during the LRA war. A total of 23 people were executed and 23 others burnt in grass-thatched huts in 2004.
The out-going Anglican Bishop of Northern Uganda Diocese, the Rev. Nelson Onono-Onweng, urged Kony to surrender and end the 22-year-old war.
The country director of Invisible Children, Jolly Grace Laker-Okot, said the prayer indicated that peace was returning to the sub-region.
The dignitaries demolished two grass-thatched huts as a sign that it was time for the IDPs to return to their homes.
The prayer was followed by a night candle lighting at Kaunda Grounds, where various artists performed songs about peace.