tagged w/ Uganda
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Scott Lively is also directly connected to the kill-a-gay legislation in Uganda, which would make homosexual activity punishable by a lengthy prison sentence and/or death. Lively is the co-author (with Kevin Abrams) of The Pink Swastika, which poses the notion that homosexuals are the true inventors of Nazism, a preposterous position that Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at New York University, states is a “flat-out lie.”
http://veracitystew.com/2012/02/08/religious-rights-scott-lively-spreads-his-own-brand-of-hate/Scott Lively is also directly connected to the kill-a-gay legislation in Uganda, which... more
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MY SNUGGIE WAS THE SINGLE GREATEST THING I PACKED. No lie. I use it every night and it is perfect for the nighttime weather here. If nothing else, it will spark up a really interesting conversation with the Africans you meet about American stupidity and materialism. And they will have a good laugh when you show them how to wear it. (“No, I swear it’s not a robe! Don’t you see? You wear it the other way!”)MY SNUGGIE WAS THE SINGLE GREATEST THING I PACKED. No lie. I use it every night and it... more
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As the United States prepares to send 100 armed troops to Uganda to battle the Lord’s Resistance Army, we revisit a post we made several months ago that calculates the potential for an armed group’s collapse following a decapitation strike on the group’s leadership. Our chart specifically highlighted the LRA and would seem to suggest U.S. forces would best serve their mission objective by engaging and destroying the LRA’s legions of child soldiers instead of targeting the group’s command structure, a grisly prospect.
A paper by Dr. Jenna Jordan, presented at the 2010 meeting of the International Studies Association, looks at the potential for collapse of a non-state military group following elimination of the group’s leadership by police or military action. In general, Jordan’s survey finds, the older a group is the less likely it is to collapse following a decapitation strike. Additionally, religiously motivated groups are highly resistant to attacks on their leadership, while separatist and ideologically-motivated organizations are easier to destabilize through decapitation.
Read more: http://www.parapolitical.com/post/11578634960#ixzz1b4RlYOzYAs the United States prepares to send 100 armed troops to Uganda to battle the... more
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When the Lord's Resistance Army showed up in the Central African Republican village of Obo in 2008, everyone who refused to join them was killed. One of the men they scooped up, Daba Emmanuel, would spend the next year as one of the LRA's slave-soldiers. Indoctrinated, abused, and eventually forced to perform raids like the one against Obo, he survived to tell journalist Graeme Wood his story. "We killed the old immediately, and kept the young for work," Emmanuel said.
Recalling one raid on a village in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he told Wood that his small LRA faction began by gathering all the villagers together. "We put them into the church and closed the doors," Emmanuel remembered. They'd been ordered to steal supplies and find new children to make into slaves. "We entered only to choose some small girls and boys. The rest we burnt." They killed anyone who tried to escape with machetes, logs, or stones -- new recruits like Emmanuel were not trusted with rifles. As with similar groups, it's children who make the most loyal soldiers -- once their home has been destroyed, their language forgotten, and their religion replaced with a cult-like worship of LRA leader Joseph Kony, betrayal or escape is much less likely.
Part insurgency and part cult, the Lord's Resistance Army has waged a 20-year campaign of terror across Uganda, where it originally formed in opposition to the government there, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan. It raids villages, massacres for no other purpose than bloodlust, enslaves child soldiers and child sex slaves, drugs its captives to make them more violent, all in an apparently endless mission that has destroyed countless villages and killed thousands of civilians, transforming one of the world's least governed spaces into one of its most dangerous.
A 2009 U.S. law authorizing financial support to Uganda against the LRA cites studies finding the LRA had abducted 66,000 children and displaced two million civilians. Last year, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth -- no hawk -- called on Obama to use U.S. military force against the Lord's Resistance Army. Roth cited the group's overwhelming humanitarian toll, its small size, and (unlike, for example, the Taliban) its extreme unpopularity among the populations it terrorizes.
The U.S. already supplies intelligence and a few million dollars to the Ugandan government in its totally failed quest to stop the LRA and to capture Joseph Kony, who is under indictment for war crimes from the International Criminal Court. On Friday, President Obama announced he would be sending approximately 100 U.S. combat troops to "act as advisors to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA. Our forces will provide information, advice, and assistance to select partner nation forces." Special forces will be among them. The troops will not fire unless fired upon, but they will be able to provide much-need intelligence and organizational support to the Ugandan forces; they will also provide an important check on Uganda's troops, who might be tempted toward less-than-legal behavior as they crash around Central Africa.
Kony may be barking mad -- he performs bizarre rituals and claims to fight for "the Ten Commandments" -- but he has survived for two decades, outnumbered and outmatched by every metric, on little more than his ideology and his wits. "Kony is a brilliant tactician & knows the terrain better than anybody. He surrounds himself with scouts who have what amounts to an early warning system, which is how he's eluded capture for so long," Morehouse College assistant professor and Central Africa expert Laura Seay warned on twitter. "Kony also operates in some of the least-governed areas of the world's weakest states. Many of these places have no roads, infrastructure. All of this adds up for a potential mess for US troops, who don't know the terrain & can't count on host government troops to be helpful or even to fight. This will not be easy for only 100 US forces to carry out, especially given language barriers." Seay also points out that Kony uses children as human shield -- and as much of his fighting force -- making any direct action ethically and morally difficult.
Obama's decision to send 100 troops is a microscopically small deployment compared to the broader U.S. military diaspora: hundreds of thousands of troops in dozens of countries. The list of countries with around 100 or more U.S. troops might surprise you: Colombia, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, and Djibouti, to name a few. That list would probably be a lot longer if it included special forces deployment. Last year, Marc Ambinder reported that Obama had approved special forces bases and operations across the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia. But those operations, large and small, target terrorist groups and rogue states that threaten the U.S. -- something the Lord's Resistance Army could not possibly do.
If this if the humanitarian mission that the Obama administration says it is, and if it achieves the humanitarian goals it is setting out to achieve, it would be harder to find a more suitable target than the Lord's Resistance Army. Since World War Two, the U.S. has often presented its military, overwhelmingly the most powerful on Earth, as a force for good and global stability. In execution, it has been a force for furthering U.S., not global, interests -- just like every other national military. Some U.S. military actions, such as the intervention in Libya or the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, were sold as efforts for global peace, and that was probably part of the motivation, but they were also designed to promote American interests: to remove threats and replace them with friendly faces.
It's difficult to find a U.S. interest at stake in the Lord's Resistance Army's campaign of violence. The group could go on killing and enslaving for decades -- as they well might -- and the American way of life would continue chugging along. It's possible that there's some immediate U.S. interest at stake we can't obviously see. Maybe, for example, Uganda is offering the U.S. more help with peacekeeping and counterterrorism in East Africa, where the U.S. does have concrete interests, in exchange for the troops. But it certainly looks like a primarily or purely humanitarian military mission, if a very small one. The Obama administration is hoping that these 100 troops will succeed where past U.S. assistance against the LRA -- intelligence, satellite images, fuel, and millions of dollars -- has failed. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. But this seems to suggest a small but important shift in how, where, and why the U.S. uses applies military force.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/why-is-obama-sending-troops-against-the-lords-resistance-army/246748/When the Lord's Resistance Army showed up in the Central African Republican... more
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A BBC undercover reporter is told: "We can bury the child alive on your construction site"
The villages and farming communities that surround Uganda's capital, Kampala, are gripped by fear. Schoolchildren are closely watched by teachers and parents as they make their way home from school. In playgrounds and on the roadside are posters warning of the danger of abduction by witch doctors for the purpose of child sacrifice.
The ritual, which some believe brings wealth and good health, was almost unheard of in the country until about three years ago, but it has re-emerged, seemingly alongside a boom in the country's economy.
The mutilated bodies of children have been discovered at roadsides, the victims of an apparently growing belief in the power of human sacrifice.
'Sacrifice business'
Many believe that members of the country's new elite are paying witch doctors vast sums of money for the sacrifices in a bid to increase their wealth.
At the Kyampisi Childcare Ministries church, Pastor Peter Sewakiryanga is teaching local children a song called Heal Our Land, End Child Sacrifice.
To hear dozens of young voices singing such shocking words epitomises how ritual murder has become part of everyday life here.
"Child sacrifice has risen because people have become lovers of money. They want to get richer," the pastor says. "They have a belief that when you sacrifice a child you get wealth, and there are people who are willing to buy these children for a price. So they have become a commodity of exchange, child sacrifice has become a commercial business."
The pastor and his parishioners are lobbying the government to regulate witch doctors and improve police resources to investigate these crimes.
Sometimes, they accuse us of these things because we make no arrests, but we are limited.”
According to official police figures, there was one case of child sacrifice in 2006; in 2008 the police say they investigated 25 alleged ritual murders, and in 2009, another 29.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15255357A BBC undercover reporter is told: "We can bury the child alive on your... more
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The Bureau recommends a BBC investigation exposing how child sacrifice has become a business in Uganda, aired last night.
‘They call him the miracle child,’ reporter Chris Rogers begins. ‘A machete was sliced through Allan’s head and neck in an attempt to behead him. He was also castrated – the work of witch doctors, attempting child sacrifice.’
Allan is nine, and a rare survivor of the Juju, or ‘witchcraft’ ritual that has re-emerged in Uganda over the past three years, coinciding with a boom in Uganda’s economy.
Many believe that members of the country’s new elite are paying vast sums of money for the sacrifices, claimed by Juju witch doctors to bring wealth, good health and fortune.
Posing as a businessman wanting luck and success for a construction project, BBC reporter Rogers visited a witch doctor in a the village surrounding Uganda’s capital, Kampala, where child abductions have taken place.
He was told that slaughtering a child is ‘the most powerful spell’. Emotionless, the witch doctor explained: ‘We can bury the child alive on your construction site, or we cut the child and put their blood in a bottle of spiritual medicine. If it’s a male, the whole head is cut off, and his genitals.’
The doctor demanded a fee of $390 (£250) for the ritual.
According to official police figures in Uganda, there have been 38 cases of child sacrifice since 2006. However, UK-based charity, Jubilee Campaign says in a report that the true number of cases is in the hundreds, and claims more than 900 cases have yet to be investigated by the police because of corruption and a lack of resources.
The Campaign are lobbying the Ugandan government to introduce new legislation on child sacrifice, and to better equip the police, who have been accused of inaction and of attempting to bribe victims’ families rather than pursue offenders.
Watch the full investigation @ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15267792The Bureau recommends a BBC investigation exposing how child sacrifice has become a... more
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Famine has spread into one more region of Somalia and more than four million Somalis now need aid, the United Nations said Monday.
Hundreds of Somalis are dying every day, the UN Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia found in its latest surveys. At least half of them are children.
About 750,000 more people may die from famine in the next four months if there is no adequate response, the UN report said, an increase of 66 per cent from July.
Famine
Learn more about how the UN determines if food crisis has reached the level of famine.
The top humanitarian official for Somalia described getting aid to the starving as a "race against time" and warned the famine would probably spread before the end of the year.
"This isn't a short-term crisis," said Mark Bowden, who heads the UN office coordinating humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Bowden said the four million Somalis needing aid represent more than half of Somalia's population. He said it is also an increase from 3.7 million Somalis who needed aid in July.
The southern Bay region is the latest area to be declared a famine zone. Nearly 60 per cent of people there are acutely malnourished — four times the rate at which an emergency is declared, said Grainne Moloney, head of the food security unit.
"I've not seen anything like it," said Moloney.
Famine in 6 areas
Famine has now affected six areas, including four southern Somali regions and two settlements of internally displaced people.
The UN says tens of thousands of people already have died in Somalia due to the severe violence, drought and famine. More than 150,000 refugees have sought aid in the last few months. Families in Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti have also been affected.
Somalia has been hit hardest, its problems compounded by more than 20 years of civil war and Islamist insurgents that banned many aid agencies, including the UN's World Food Program, from their territory.
Maloney said a bad drought meant that harvests there are a quarter of normal levels — the worst for 17 years. The price of a day's casual labor had dropped from 15 kilograms of cereal to three kilograms, she said.
Bowden said access to areas in the south held by the al-Shabab insurgent militia was improving, and that there were some aid agencies that were able to work there.
more at the linkFamine has spread into one more region of Somalia and more than four million Somalis... more
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Ghana is giving Uganda a run for their money in the Worst Place to be Gay contest. While the “rounding up” of all homosexuals in the country’s western parts isn’t quite Kill the Gays Bill level sensational, it’s hard to ignore the Holocaust parallels here.
Ghana’s Western Region Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo MP has ordered the immediate arrest of all homosexuals in the country’s west. Aidooo has tasked Ghana’s Bureau of National Investigations and security forces to round up the country’s gay population and has called on landlords and tenants to inform on people they suspect of being homosexuals.
“All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society,” he said. The move by the Minister follows months of campaigning by the Christian Council of Ghana which last week called on Ghanaians not to vote for any politician who believes in the rights of homosexuals.
Muslims and Christians in the Western Region have been staging protests ever since a local media report claimed there were around 8000 homosexuals and lesbians in the district
What happens next here? What does a nation that successfully demonizes an entire swath of people to the extent that their neighbors are willing to participate in the herding and arrests of them do next? In other words, once all of the country’s homosexuals are rounded up together, what does Ghana do with them?Ghana is giving Uganda a run for their money in the Worst Place to be Gay contest.... more
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In 2010, Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigated the influence of American evangelicals on proposed legislation in Uganda that might make being gay against the law -- and even possibly carry the death penalty. In this update to "Missionaries of Hate," van Zeller gives an update on the ongoing impact of the bill, which was recently reintroduced in committee but did not get voted on by the full parliament.
"Vanguard" is Current TV's no-limits documentary series whose award-winning correspondents put themselves in extraordinary situations to immerse viewers in global issues that have a large social significance. Unlike sound-bite driven reporting, the show's correspondents, Adam Yamaguchi, Christof Putzel and Mariana van Zeller, serve as trusted guides who take viewers on in-depth real life adventures in pursuit of some of the world's most important stories.
For more, go to http://current.com/vanguard.
Current Media, the Peabody-and Emmy Award-winning television and online network founded in 2005 by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, engages viewers with smart, provocative and timely programming -stories that no one else is telling in ways that no one else is telling them. Current's programming shines a light where others won't dare and boldly explores important subjects -- opening minds, sparking conversations and forming deep connections with its viewers. The channel's audience is comprised of affluent, curious, social and connected adults who crave the kind of entertaining, enlightening, witty and informative programming found on Current's TV and online properties. Current is now available via cable and satellite TV in 75 million households worldwide - 60 million households in the US - through distribution partners Comcast (Channel 107); Time Warner ; DirecTV (Channel 358 nationwide); Dish Network (Channel 196 nationwide); Verizon and AT&T. In the UK and Ireland, Current is available on BSkyB (Channel 183) and Virgin Media (Channel 155), and in Italy, Current is available on Sky Italia (Channel 130). Viewers can also find Current online at http://www.current.com.In 2010, Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller investigated the influence of... more
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Wearing white for peace, a Ugandan women's advocacy group has appealed to the United Nations amid a violent police crackdown on protesters. Ten have been killed, 100 injured and 600 arrested since April, a rights group says.
Rita Achiro, executive director of Uganda Women's Network, an advocacy and lobbying network, says last week's protest march by hundreds of women wasn't aimed at threatening the government.
Instead, she describes it as a peaceful show of the women's demand for the government's accountability.
"This is not a politically motivated march," her group said in a press statement, "and that is why we are dressed in white because white shows peace. We demand strong policy measures to address issues of food security, unemployment, health and education." The women have handed the statement to Margaret Sekaggya, a Ugandan lawyer and current U.N. special rapporteur on human rights defenders, who was at the demonstration last week.
"We have witnessed a series of disturbing events in which we have seen the state and its law enforcement agencies respond in a brutal and often excessive manner to citizens' demand for government action to address increased prices, cost of living, poverty, inequality in distribution of resources, corruption and the apparent disregard of pressing priorities in allocation of government expenditure," reads the Uganda Women's Network's statement, which was circulated before and during the demonstration.
One activist, who declined to give her name for security reasons, says they have no one to turn to for help.
"We call upon the government that women of Uganda are tired of tear gas, violence and we are scared of police," she says. "We cannot run to them when we need help."
Read the full story at Women's eNews:
http://womensenews.org/story/peace/110517/ugandan-women-appeal-un-over-police-violenceWearing white for peace, a Ugandan women's advocacy group has appealed to the... more
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Uganda's parliament has adjourned without debating a controversial bill which includes the death penalty for some homosexual acts.
It had been reported that a vote could be held on Friday.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been condemned by Western leaders and human rights groups, some of whom are celebrating victory.
The bill, first introduced in 2009, could still be brought up when the new parliament meets later this year.
Uganda is a largely conservative society and many people condemn homosexuality both as un-African and un-Christian.
But in recent years, some gay rights groups have been set up in the country.
Homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda but the bill would increase the penalty for those convicted to life in prison.
Those found guilty of "aggravated homosexuality" - defined as when one of the participants is a minor, HIV-positive, disabled or a "serial offender" - would face the death penalty.
Anyone failing to report to the authorities a person they knew to be homosexual would also be liable to prosecution.
International pressure
Internet campaign group Avaaz said the bill's lack of progress was a "victory for all Ugandans and people across the world who value human rights".
"We must now ensure this heinous bill can never return to parliament again," said Avaaz campaign director Alice Jay.
Maria Burnett, of Human Rights Watch, said it would still be a very long fight to stop the Ugandan legislation as "the issue has not gone away".
"The international pressure over the last year and a half has been very important to show that Uganda cannot act in isolation from the international community," she said.
US President Barack Obama has condemned the bill and donors have urged Uganda's government to ensure the measures never become law.
But David Bahati, the MP who introduced the private member's bill, said he would try to reintroduce it when the next parliament convened after February's elections, and said it had achieved his goal of sparking debate.
"We have made important steps in raising the issue and that will continue," he was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
In January, David Kato, a campaigner who led condemnation of the bill, was murdered not long after suing a paper that outed him as gay. Police denied the killing was because of his sexuality.
Three months before the murder, Uganda's Rolling Stone newspaper had published the photographs of several people it said were gay, with the headline "Hang them".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13392723Uganda's parliament has adjourned without debating a controversial bill which... more
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pdy
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added this
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9 months ago
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Please sign this and pass this on.
From site:
"Update May 11 - The Pressure is Working! President Museveni prevented the bill from coming to a vote today! But the anti-gay movement is fighting to bring it back in an emergency session. The signatures are being delivered directly to Uganda's parliament and there are hundreds of news stories today on this campaign. Let's ramp up the pressure - if we can stop this bill for 3 more days, this Parliament's options will run out - we'll win this! "Please sign this and pass this on.
From site:
"Update May 11 - The... more
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The proposed anti-gay legislation in Uganda explored in Vanguard's "Missionaries of Hate" continues to be debated by the country's legislators. The bill could be voted on this week, lawmakers said.
From The Associated Press:
The bill's author, David Bahati, told The Associated Press last month that the death penalty provision in the bill was "something we have moved away from." The bill is now undergoing debate and negotiations, so a new version would likely be presented before a final vote is held.
One of the bill's backers, an anti-gay pastor named Martin Ssempa, told the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee on Monday that he does not support the death penalty provision. He said instead that gays should face up to seven years in prison.
Activists have suggested that people from around the world can contact their heads of state.
Learn more about the bill and the influence of American evangelicals on its development on Vanguard's blog, and watch the full episode "Missionaries of Hate" here. The proposed anti-gay legislation in Uganda explored in Vanguard's... more
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shana
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added this
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In northern Uganda, daughters with limited understanding of HIV/AIDS are married off at young ages into polygamous households still struggling with the legacy of a brutal 16-year civil war. The practice is a recipe for rapid disease transmission.
Education is one factor fueling a gender gap in HIV awareness in the country. Because of poverty and early pregnancy, just 7 percent of girls attend secondary school, according to the Ministry of Education. Only 32 percent of young women and 38 percent of young men in Uganda have comprehensive knowledge of HIV, according to UNICEF.
In northern Uganda the gender gap in HIV awareness is wider. Almost double the percentage of men and young men here had comprehensive knowledge of HIV/AIDS compared with their female counterparts, who do not receive much schooling and demonstrated less HIV/AIDS knowledge than most Ugandan women, according to the latest Uganda Demographic and Health Survey.
Northern Uganda has the country's second-highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rate behind central Uganda, according to a 2008 report by the Program for Accessible Health, Communication and Education, a local organization. Authors attribute that to the 20-year insurgency in the region by the Lord's Resistance Army starting in 1986. More than 1.6 million Ugandans fled their homes and about 30,000 children were abducted, according to the U.N.
The rebels terrorized anyone perceived to be sympathetic to the government by cutting off their body parts and forcing children to be soldiers or sex slaves, according to Human Rights Watch, the international human rights organization.
Full story at Women's eNews http://www.womensenews.org/story/hivaids/110423/wars-legacy-fuels-hiv-spread-in-northern-ugandaIn northern Uganda, daughters with limited understanding of HIV/AIDS are married off... more
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The BBC has the first detailed accounts of how Ugandan women ended up in domestic slavery in Iraq, and the extraordinary story of their rescue.
At least 100 of the Ugandan women who went to Iraq in 2009 remain unaccounted for
Prossie was working as a schoolteacher when she heard an attractive advert on Ugandan radio.
A Kampala company called Uganda Veterans Development Ltd was recruiting women to work for high wages in shops in US Army bases in Iraq.
She signed up, along with 146 other Ugandan women.
But when she arrived in Baghdad, she discovered that been bought by an Iraqi agent for $3,500 (£2,200). Her real job was as a housemaid for an Iraqi family.
Like many others, she was forced to work long hours, sometimes from 5am until midnight. She often received little food or water and she was locked inside the house.
"It was a lot of work because Iraqis have this dust, the sand storms, it keeps on falling, so you have to keep on cleaning from morning until you sleep," Prossie said.
Read more about their ordeal at the linkThe BBC has the first detailed accounts of how Ugandan women ended up in domestic... more
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pdy
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