I saw my people gang-raped, butchered at Barlonyo
Feb 24, 2014
When the residents of Barlonyo village in Lira district think of February 21, they cannot help but break down in tears. It brings back sad memories of February 21, 2004, a black Saturday when over 350 of their loved ones were allegedly savagely killed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. Qui
SUNDAY VISION
When the residents of Barlonyo village in Lira district think of February 21, they cannot help but break down in tears. It brings back sad memories of February 21, 2004, a black Saturday when over 350 of their loved ones were allegedly savagely killed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels. Quinto Adii, 21, is a survivor of the massacre and lost two siblings. He shared his story with Solomon Oleny
Time check: 6:30pm. Save for the fresh winds that were breaking twigs off trees in the neighbouring vast savannah grasslands where I had been grazing cattle all day, all was calm as I was retiring back to our internally displaced people’s camp at Barlonyo.
The camp was home to 48,000 Langi living in over 10,000 grass-thatched huts.
As the night set in, the pregnant clouds suddenly started lashing the plains with electrifying strokes of lightening and deafening thunder. It started raining, compelling me to run to the camp.
Upon arrival, I decided to take a warm bath. Little did I know that the camp was already surrounded by over 100 rebels armed for a killing spree. Barely two minutes after I had rubbed soap in my face, bullets started raining from the western side of the camp.
When I poked my face above the bathroom’s brick walls, I was treated to the most chaotic and bloody scene of my life. The camp was dotted with many rebels, mainly dressed in maroon and army green uniforms.
As their lips intoxicated the air with foul language, their hands never tired of flinging grenades in every direction of the camp, especially the eastern direction, where the civilians were running for their dear lives.
Every time a grenade fell on the huts, it razed them to the ground — instantly filling the air with a thick cloud of black smoke that was more tear-provoking than teargas. If it landed on people in the huts, it exploded like a bomb, scattering their bloody body parts in every direction.
Upon this sight, I feared for the worst and ran towards my two siblings’ adjacent hut to rescue them before they could be killed, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Puzzled, I decided to run out of the camp together with about 20 people. However, we ran right into a group of over 50 rebels, who were armed with guns and machetes.
At this point, I switched direction and run towards the neighbouring army barracks seeking protection. But alas, most of the soldiers had already fled after being overpowered by the attackers.
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Residents of Barlonyo village in Lira district praying for peace and those who lost their lives on December 26, 2009
Residents of Barlonyo village in Lira district praying for peace and those who lost their lives on December 26, 2009
A soldier’s agony
A few metres from the barracks, I came across a soldier lying in a pool of blood — next to eight lifeless bodies of his colleagues who had been stabbed several times in the chest, before being beheaded.
Unlike his colleagues, he had been subjected to a rather slower and more painful death. His genitals had been cut off. In excruciating pain, tears streamed down his face, he made an emergency phone call to the nearest barracks for backup.
To our dismay, the recipient of the call said they could not respond immediately because it was raining.
Before he could breathe his last, he offered me his AK47 rifle for self-defence, but I declined to take it because I knew the rebels would pursue me if they noticed I was armed.
As fate would have it, I ran out of luck after running into an ambush set up by another group of rebels. I encountered about 60 rebels at the northern frontier, which is bordered by River Moroto, a vast swampy river.
Together with over 90 people, we were chased back into the barracks in a typical cat and mouse chase. On reaching the heart of the camp, we were besieged from all sides by the rebels, who merged us with over 400 captives who were mainly women and children.
At about 8:00pm, the rebels separated us into three groups, each awaiting a different fate.
While the first group, mainly comprising women and adolescent girls were gang-raped to unconsciousness, the second group comprising energetic teenagers — mainly boys — were reserved for subsequent recruitment into the rebels’ militia. I belonged in this group.
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The Barlonyo mass grave
Then there was the third group mainly comprising the weak, elderly, women and minors who were executed in cold blood. My two siblings Polycarp Omara, 4, and Sharon Acio, 2, were part of this group.
The main method of execution was by cutting of the victims with machetes, after which their body parts were cooked in huge clay pots. When the attackers felt they had butchered so many people, they randomly sprayed bullets at the elderly.
Eventually, those who had survived the above massacres were stuffed into huts, which were set ablaze.
As the fire consumed them, they screamed aloud for help, but the assailants kept mocking and laughing at them sarcastically.
At about 10:00pm, the massacre came to a climax.
Then my group was tasked with carrying the bulky loot from the camp towards Sudan. We walked for three days before taking a break in some thick tropical forest, approximately 150km from Barlonyo.
I was able to escape after I was sent to fetch water at a spring in the bush. They never saw me again.
What the mass grave means to the locals
Owing to the crude means by which most of the victims were executed, it was hard to identify their bodies after the massacre.
For this reason, relatives of the deceased unanimously agreed to burry all of the 394 victims in a 70-metre long mass grave in the camp, according to the area LC1 chairperson. In their commemoration, a ceramic monument was built at the heart of the U-shaped mass grave.
But when the plaque was put up, it read: “Here rests the remains of 121 innocent Ugandans who were massacred by the LRA terrorists on February 21, 2004.”
Initially, the mass grave used to serve as a defence trench of the Amuka, a local militia tasked with protecting the Barlonyo community against the LRA.
Since the establishment of the monument, the Barlonyo community has had mixed reactions about it. According to Pule Adonyo, a resident of Barlonyo, the grave is a place to remember and honour their fallen beloved ones.
The mass grave also gives him the inspiration to reconcile with those who committed the atrocities. “Most importantly, it is one thing that unites people of northern Uganda because we felt the same pain,” he says.
However, to folks like Quinto Adii, whose two siblings were buried in the mass grave, the Barlonyo site mirrors the worst brutality of the LRA rebellion in northern Uganda.
“Every time I look at the mass grave, it brings back painful memories of how my two siblings were butchered. It also rubs in my face how the Government did not come to the rescue of many victims of the LRA war at a time it mattered the most,” Adii says.
To the likes of Samuel Opio, 19, Barlonyo’s mass grave and the monument leave him worried about the future. He thinks that another massacre could happen again because Kony has neither been captured nor killed.
“Kony is like an active volcano that is bound to erupt anytime. I think it would be better if Kony’s group is arrested or destroyed. That is what I call justice,” he says.
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