First Kill Your Family

First Kill Your Family PDF Author: Peter Eichstaedt
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613749325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
&“Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard's slender body as he wipes away tears.&” For more than twenty years, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps. The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord's Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor. In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child &“brides,&” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.

Child to Soldier

Child to Soldier PDF Author: Opiyo Oloya
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442664258
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
What happens when children are forced to become child soldiers? How are they transformed from children to combatants? In Child to Soldier, Opiyo Oloya addresses these timely, troubling questions by exploring how Acholi children in Northern Uganda, abducted by infamous warlord Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), become soldiers. Oloya – himself an Acholi, a refugee from Idi Amin’s rule of Uganda, and a high ranking figure in Canadian education – is a scholar who challenges conventional thinking on child-inducted soldiers by illustrating the familial loyalty that develops within a child’s new surroundings in the bush. Based on interviews with former child combatants, this book provides a cultural context for understanding the process of socializing children into violence. Oloya details how Kony and the LRA exploit and pervert Acholi cultural heritage and pride to control and direct the children in war. Child to Soldier is also ground-breaking in its emphasis on the tragic fact that child-inducted soldiers do not remain children forever, but become adults who remain sharply scarred by their introduction into combat at a young age. Given the constant struggle in courts in deciding whether former child-inducted soldiers should be pardoned or prosecuted for their activities and conduct, Oloya’s eye-opening book will have a major impact.

I Am Evelyn Amony

I Am Evelyn Amony PDF Author: Evelyn Amony
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780299304935
Category : Human rights workers
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description


Army of God

Army of God PDF Author: David Axe
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610393007
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Joseph Kony is the most dangerous guerilla leader in modern African history. It started with a visit from spirits. In 1991, Kony claimed that spiritual beings had come to him with instructions: he was to lead his group of rebels, the Lord's Resistance Army, in a series of brutal raids against ordinary Ugandan civilians. Decades later, Kony has sown chaos throughout Central Africa, kidnapping and terrorizing countless innocents -- especially children. Yet despite an enormous global outcry, the Kony 2012 movement, and an international military intervention, the carnage has continued. Drawn from on-the-ground reporting by war correspondent David Axe and starkly illustrated by Tim Hamilton, Army of God is the first-ever graphic account of the global phenomenon surrounding Kony -- from the devastation he has left behind to the long campaign to defeat him for good.

When The Walking Defeats You

When The Walking Defeats You PDF Author: Ledio Cakaj
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783608153
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Deep in the Congo’s Garamba National Park in the dead of night, Joseph Kony – the notorious warlord wanted by the International Criminal Court – made a shocking admission. Loosened by home-made wine, exposing a vulnerability he could never show the world, Kony looked George Omona in the eye, ‘You need to know that if I had a choice I would not be doing this ... I wish I could be a man of books, like you.’ Three years earlier George was expelled from one of Uganda’s best schools, just weeks before he was due to graduate with exemplary grades, destroying his dreams of becoming a teacher. In desperation, his uncle found him a role in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). George’s education and fluent command of English allowed him to rapidly rise through the ranks, eventually becoming one of Kony’s bodyguards, before he finally made his escape. George’s story – based on many hours of interviews with acknowledged LRA expert Ledio Cakaj – provides a vivid, personal and fascinating insight into the inner workings of the LRA, and the mind of Kony, its self-appointed prophet.

The Lord's Resistance Army

The Lord's Resistance Army PDF Author: Mareike Schomerus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108626572
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is one of Africa's most notorious armed rebel groups, having operated across Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When they entered the Juba Peace Talks with the Ugandan Government in 2006, the peace deal seemed like a gift to fighters who had for years barely been surviving in Central Africa's jungles. Yet the talks failed. Why? Based on exclusive interviews with LRA fighters and their notorious leader Joseph Kony, Mareike Schomerus provides insights into how the LRA experienced the Juba Talks, revealing developing dynamics and deep distrust within a conflict system and how these became entrenched through the peace negotiations. In so doing, Schomerus offers an explanation as to why current approaches to ending armed violence not only fail but how they actively contribute to their own failure, and calls for a new approach to contemporary peacemaking.

The Christmas Massacres

The Christmas Massacres PDF Author: Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
ISBN: 1564324389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
And recommendations -- Maps -- Background -- Attacks on civilians between September and November 2008 -- The Christmas massacres -- Life with the LRA : the children speak -- Response from the LRA -- Recent international action on the LRA -- Acknowledgements.

Against Humanity

Against Humanity PDF Author: Sam Dubal
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520296095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Introduction : against humanity -- How violence became inhuman : the making of modern moral sensibilities -- Gorilla warfare : life in and beyond the bush -- Beyond reason : magic and science in the LRA -- Interlude : Re-turn and dis-integration -- Rebel kinship beyond humanity : love and belonging in the war -- Rebels and charity cases : politics, ethics, and the concept of humanity -- Conclusion : beyond humanity, or how do we heal?

Child to Soldier

Child to Soldier PDF Author: Opiyo Oloya
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 144261417X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A collection of stories and interviews from former child soldiers of the Lord's Resistance Army.

First Kill Your Family

First Kill Your Family PDF Author: Peter Eichstaedt
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613749325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
&“Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard's slender body as he wipes away tears.&” For more than twenty years, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps. The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord's Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor. In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child &“brides,&” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.

Joseph Kony & the Lord's Resistance Army

Joseph Kony & the Lord's Resistance Army PDF Author: Charles River Charles River Editors
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781508975014
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents The Lord's Resistance Army appeared on the conflict landscape of Central Africa at the dawn of perhaps one of the bleakest period of post independence African history: the 1980s and 1990s. This was the era of Afro-pessimism, during which the proliferation of war and crisis in Africa appeared simply overwhelming. It was during this period that the continent began to feel the full weight of the AIDS crisis, which was exacerbated by economic stagnation, continent wide corruption, poor governance, the highest levels of unemployment since decolonization and apparently unsolvable conflicts in regions as diverse as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Angola, Western Sahara, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and of course that region of perennial instability, the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Here a complex mix of colonial legacy, ethnic incompatibility, isolation and lawlessness has combined in the years since independence to create a theatre of ongoing political unrest. Indeed, it was this region that saw perhaps one of the most iconic episodes of the 1990s, the Rwandan Genocide, the ramifications of which have included two major wars fought within the Congo, deadly ethnic equalization throughout the region, knock-on wars in Uganda and Central African Republic and an ongoing see-saw balance of power in an extremely volatile region. Another similar region of ongoing instability that factors into this subject has been the broad axis that includes South Sudan, northern Uganda, northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), southern Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR). The engine of conflict in this broad region, in particular in western and southern Sudan, has been the fundamental incompatibility of the largely Islamic north and the black Christian/animist south. This apparently unbridgeable gulf has proved to be the catalyst of nearly 60-years of perpetual conflict. The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency straddles both of these axes, and although it is limited in scope by narrow ethnic appeal and limited political pretensions, it has nonetheless proved in the nearly three decades of its existence to be very persistent, and extremely difficult so far to eradicate. This book looks at the insurgency of America's most notorious guerrilla army, and the manner in which Joseph Kony came to the attention of the world. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Lord's Resistance Army like never before, in no time at all.