Otunnu’s outbursts are driven by fear
Jun 07, 2010
THE renewed vigour by the Uganda People’s Congress’ president Olara Otunnu to have President Yoweri Museveni and the UPDF investigated and perhaps indicted by the ICC for alleged war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and aggression, are kicks of a dying horse.
THE renewed vigour by the Uganda People’s Congress’ president Olara Otunnu to have President Yoweri Museveni and the UPDF investigated and perhaps indicted by the ICC for alleged war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and aggression, are kicks of a dying horse.
It is a desperate attempt to whitewash his former footmen in the UPDA, Holy Spirit Movement, and LRA from the horrendous atrocities they committed against the people of northern Uganda.
UPDA was the immediate armed outfit of an exclusively Acholi former UNLA soldiers that NRA/M threw out who tried to stage rearguard actions in August 1986 hoping to restore Gen. Tito Okello, Bazillio Okello, Brig. Odong Latek, Dr Benjamin Obonyo, and Otunnu back into state power.
It is this tribal nostalgia, having drank water from the same village well in Namokora with the Okellos, that drives Otunnu to date, even when he knows his ranting is hollow.
Otherwise, Uganda has had enough atrocities for which leaders can be investigated, but Otunnu’s attempt to drag in UPDF involvement in DR Congo and South Sudan as aggression, is a half clever way to cobble together another regional conspiracy against Uganda, which will fail. But NRM welcomes any inquiry preferably when UPC is back in government since they claim Museveni is on his way out.
And it was good the ICC chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo challenged Otunnu “to produce concrete evidence and not engage in political debate.
“As the prosecutor of the ICC, my role is to ensure the control of massive crimes with tangible evidence. If he (Otunnu) has information he wants to submit, let him give it to me but I cannot follow political statements. I follow crimes committed after July 2002, which include crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.â€
As Ocampo said last week, his (ICC investigations) “had found the LRA responsible for most atrocities.†As a former UN top official, surely Otunnu knows how the UN system works. Unless he proves that the UN process of gathering and compiling information as that of Ocampo can be compromised and should not be believed.
LRA having accepted responsibility, it would appear, therefore, that Otunnu and other Acholi elites both here and in the Diaspora long associated with the LRA, are asking for the indictment of Museveni and UPDF to divert attention from the killers.
By this strategy, Otunnu knows that perhaps the full truth about his own complicity in the war although not direct will never be known. After all, if captured and arraigned before courts, the LRA leaders are likely to give the names of those who supported them.
Otunnu’s bad-mouthing of Museveni and the UPDF through numerous media outbursts is driven by the fear of the likely outcome of Kony and Ongwen’s revelations in courts during prosecution. It is a fear Otunnu may run away from for some time, but not permanently because as they say, the day of reckoning will surely come for those who made their beds, to lay in them.
Museveni’s credibility goes beyond Otunnu’s outlandish views about him. Therefore, Otunnu’s view that “it is a travesty and a mockery of the ICC, that Museveni, who has the longest record of impunity, should be the host of the review. I fear that the ICC risks losing its way if it agrees to be used,†is a nullity.
“I have provided all this information and he (Ocampo) has requested for more. I shall be providing more in regard to the atrocities against the people of northern Uganda and Congo,†Otunnu is reported to have said. But it is a well known fact that those IDP camps Otunnu refers to as genocide chambers, bad as they might have been, saved hundreds of thousands from death through starvation and abductions into the wilderness by the LRA.
The writer is the NRM deputy spokesperson
It is a desperate attempt to whitewash his former footmen in the UPDA, Holy Spirit Movement, and LRA from the horrendous atrocities they committed against the people of northern Uganda.
UPDA was the immediate armed outfit of an exclusively Acholi former UNLA soldiers that NRA/M threw out who tried to stage rearguard actions in August 1986 hoping to restore Gen. Tito Okello, Bazillio Okello, Brig. Odong Latek, Dr Benjamin Obonyo, and Otunnu back into state power.
It is this tribal nostalgia, having drank water from the same village well in Namokora with the Okellos, that drives Otunnu to date, even when he knows his ranting is hollow.
Otherwise, Uganda has had enough atrocities for which leaders can be investigated, but Otunnu’s attempt to drag in UPDF involvement in DR Congo and South Sudan as aggression, is a half clever way to cobble together another regional conspiracy against Uganda, which will fail. But NRM welcomes any inquiry preferably when UPC is back in government since they claim Museveni is on his way out.
And it was good the ICC chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo challenged Otunnu “to produce concrete evidence and not engage in political debate.
“As the prosecutor of the ICC, my role is to ensure the control of massive crimes with tangible evidence. If he (Otunnu) has information he wants to submit, let him give it to me but I cannot follow political statements. I follow crimes committed after July 2002, which include crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.â€
As Ocampo said last week, his (ICC investigations) “had found the LRA responsible for most atrocities.†As a former UN top official, surely Otunnu knows how the UN system works. Unless he proves that the UN process of gathering and compiling information as that of Ocampo can be compromised and should not be believed.
LRA having accepted responsibility, it would appear, therefore, that Otunnu and other Acholi elites both here and in the Diaspora long associated with the LRA, are asking for the indictment of Museveni and UPDF to divert attention from the killers.
By this strategy, Otunnu knows that perhaps the full truth about his own complicity in the war although not direct will never be known. After all, if captured and arraigned before courts, the LRA leaders are likely to give the names of those who supported them.
Otunnu’s bad-mouthing of Museveni and the UPDF through numerous media outbursts is driven by the fear of the likely outcome of Kony and Ongwen’s revelations in courts during prosecution. It is a fear Otunnu may run away from for some time, but not permanently because as they say, the day of reckoning will surely come for those who made their beds, to lay in them.
Museveni’s credibility goes beyond Otunnu’s outlandish views about him. Therefore, Otunnu’s view that “it is a travesty and a mockery of the ICC, that Museveni, who has the longest record of impunity, should be the host of the review. I fear that the ICC risks losing its way if it agrees to be used,†is a nullity.
“I have provided all this information and he (Ocampo) has requested for more. I shall be providing more in regard to the atrocities against the people of northern Uganda and Congo,†Otunnu is reported to have said. But it is a well known fact that those IDP camps Otunnu refers to as genocide chambers, bad as they might have been, saved hundreds of thousands from death through starvation and abductions into the wilderness by the LRA.
The writer is the NRM deputy spokesperson