View previous stories
	War Crime indictments against Ugandan Rebels serve vital purpose, says UN Aid Official by Nick Grono, Jan Egeland IHT / United Nations Uganda   26 October 2006   What comes First, Peace or Justice, by Nick Grono. (International Herald Tribune)   When the interests of peace and justice conflict, there are no easy answers. In northern Uganda these issues are being starkly confronted in the ongoing peace talks between the rebel Lord"s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government.   These talks are the best opportunity so far to end a vicious guerrilla war that has lasted some 20 years and has utterly devastated northern Uganda. But difficult decisions have to be made about how best to deal with perpetrators of horrendous crimes, if the talks are to succeed.   The LRA, led by its charismatic and murderous leader, Joseph Kony, has unleashed a reign of terror over the past two decades, abducting more than 25,000 boys and girls and turning them into rebel soldiers, porters and sex slaves.   Kony"s declared objective is to rule the north in accordance with the Ten Commandments, as directed by the spirits that speak through him. But beyond this he has not espoused a clear political objective.   The Ugandan government has responded to the LRA"s campaign by unleashing its own devastation on the north, forcing over a million of the region"s Acholi inhabitants to live in camps, thus condemning them to a life removed from their fertile land, with little hope for a productive future.   According to the government"s own statistics, a thousand people a week on average are dying from conflict-induced disease and malnutrition.   The tragedy that this conflict has unleashed on the Acholi is on display all around Gulu, the main town of the north. At a center for returned LRA abductees, run by World Vision, the staff attempt the near impossible task of reintegrating some 160 formerly abducted girls, who were handed out to commanders, raped, and, having escaped, now bear children rejected by their own communities.   The nearby School of Formerly Abducted Children houses 13- and 14-year- old girls expecting the children of rebels. One by no means unique experience is that of a student who was forced to kill her brother and parents as the price of her own life; the evident trauma she suffers is beyond comprehension.   Boys who have spent much of their life in the bush, where they were forced to commit unspeakable horrors such as cutting off the lips, ears and noses of villagers deemed insufficiently supportive of the LRA, go through their daily routines with utterly blank faces.   At one of many camps within an hour"s drive of Gulu, some 45,000 Acholi have been living in squalid and unhygienic quarters for the last decade. The Ugandan government won"t allow them to return to their nearby villages.   Efforts to resolve the conflict have come to naught in the past. Recently, that has all changed - in large part because the investigation by the International Criminal Court has altered the calculations of the rebel leaders.   Last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Kony and four of his top commanders. This year Kony and his deputy, Vincent Otti, emerged from the bush for the first time to discuss peace, in talks mediated by the government of Southern Sudan. Their first and oft-repeated demand is that the ICC prosecutions be dropped.   If one accepts that the ICC is the main obstacle to peace - itself a premature judgment - it is difficult to argue that criminal accountability and the need to establish an effective ICC to deter future war criminals should take precedence over the immediate suffering of the northern Ugandans.   On the other hand, it is inconceivable that those directly responsible for these unspeakable crimes should escape being held accountable.   This is the dilemma that must be resolved when all other solutions to the conflict have failed.   The way forward is for the ICC prosecutor to proceed with his prosecutions. He has a mandate and should not be required to make the essentially political judgment of whether the prospects of an uncertain peace should take precedence over justice.   If such a judgment has to be made - and it should only be considered if major peace benefits are highly likely and genuine accountability and reconciliation mechanisms are put in place - then it should be made by the UN Security Council.   The Security Council has a peace and security mandate, and is expressly authorized by the ICC"s statute to put prosecutions on hold for a 12-month renewable period.   The talks have a long way to go, but if they reach the stage that peace is likely, the ICC prosecutions should be put on hold to give the millions in northern Uganda a chance to enjoy the peace they have thirsted after for 20 years.   * Nick Grono is vice president of the International Crisis Group   15 September 2006   War Crime indictments against Ugandan Rebels serve vital purpose, says Jan Egeland. (UN News)   The concern shared by some locals in Uganda that International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) could jeopardize the peace process in the country’s north do not outweigh the need to ensure there is no impunity for mass murder, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today.   Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland told the Security Council that during his recent visit to Uganda, where the LRA and Government forces have signed a ceasefire after 20 years of conflict, that the indictments dominated his discussions with internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and civil society groups.   Many IDPs told Mr. Egeland, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, that if the indictments were not lifted, they could threaten the outcome of peace talks to permanently end the conflict.   “I said I believed the indictments had been a factor in pushing the LRA into negotiations, that the indictments should not disrupt the talks, and that there could be no impunity for mass murder and crimes against humanity,” he told Council members in his briefing. Mr. Egeland called on the parties to “look now at the different ways to develop a solution that meets local needs for reconciliation and universal standards of justice and accountability. I believe this can be done, and that peace and justice can work together.”   Last October the ICC issued its first-ever arrest warrants against Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, and four of the group’s commanders, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Those commanders are Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya.   During the brutal civil war, the LRA became notorious for abducting children and then using them as soldiers and porters, while subjecting some to extreme violence and allocating many girls to senior officers in a form of institutional rape.   In his briefing Mr. Egeland described the situation in northern Uganda as “more promising than it has been in years,” with improvements on almost every key indicator.   The number of “night commuters” – children who leave their homes every day after dusk to avoid being abducted by the LRA – has fallen from last year’s high of 40,000 to an estimated 10,000. Security has also increased so drastically in some areas that humanitarian workers have won access to camps they had not been able to reach for years.   Mr. Egeland urged the Council to consolidate those promising signs by demonstrating strong support for the peace talks between the Government and the LRA and by prodding the two sides to strike a final agreement as soon as possible.
	Stolen wages by The Law Report Australia   Oct. 2006   Do elderly Indigenous people who have never been paid for their work have any legal options?   Damien Carrick: Tomorrow in Brisbane a Senate Inquiry is holding hearings on what has become known as the Stolen Wages issues.   From the 1890s right into the 1970s thousands of Indigenous Australians were forcibly assigned jobs, often away from their own community. Many were sent out to work as farm hands, domestics or factory workers, often doing the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks. They were paid pocket money and a large portion of their wage was kept by authorities on trust.   Ostensibly the scheme was designed to make sure that the young were properly trained and both young and old were usefully occupied. And the withheld wages were supposed to have been invested wisely, for use later in life. But most never saw their money.   In Queensland, the state government has addressed the issue by offering a maximum $4,000 compensation for those over 50 and $2,000 for those under 50, and nothing for descendants.   Yvonne Butler lives in Townsville. She"s received a number of letters from the Queensland government, telling her about the compensation offer. She describes the offer as insulting, and says she won"t take it up.   I caught Yvonne Butler just before she was about to board the train from Townsville to Brisbane. She"s travelling south to tell her story at tomorrow"s Senate Inquiry hearing. The 16-hour train trip gives her plenty of time to reflect on her early working life. As an independent-minded teenager she found herself work as a domestic. But then an avaricious local policeman stepped in for a piece of the pie.   Yvonne Butler: Yes, after finishing Year 10 and spending six months in the township of Mount Garnet and working as a domestic there, I was placed under the Aboriginal Protection Act when the police sergeant realised I was working, because as a rule it was always they found the work for you, and you were sent out to those stations. But I"d found this job and they"d come down with an employment agreement. And I remember refusing to sign it, because I said, "Why should I be under the Protection Act, because I can read and write?" And they said, "No, your parents are under it, so you have to be under this Act."   Damien Carrick: So they took a percentage of your wage then?   Yvonne Butler: Yes. The lady, prior to signing that agreement, was quite happy to give me cash in hand every Saturday, and it changed once I signed on that dotted line. I managed to get a few shillings pocket money.   Damien Carrick: What do you reckon of the offer made by the Queensland government to pay out people who worked under this system? I think it"s true, if you"re over 50, to a maximum of $4,000. What do you think of that offer?   Yvonne Butler: It"s laughable. Yes. Laughable, it"s an insult.   Damien Carrick: Do you understand why some people have taken up the offer?   Yvonne Butler: Yes. My sister, who"s 62 years old, she"s in poor health, you know, she"s going blind. My mum, she"ll be 85 on Christmas Day this year, she was born on a cattle station, she worked all her life, she would have got her freedom mid-70s, and she didn"t work till 1980.   Damien Carrick: So your mother, who worked under this system and had a large amount of money, if you like, docked from her pay, she got $4,000 for what you"re saying was a lifetime of work under this system?   Yvonne Butler: Yes. A lot of the people who are in poor health and who are quite old, they"ve taken their money for their funeral fund. They don"t want their families to be in any financial difficulty.   But this, this is a healing journey for me. The suffering that I"ve seen in my township; I myself as a child suffered malnutrition. From 8 years old to 10 years old I was hospitalised, and I have those medical documents. And my illness, it states on there, my illness was malnutrition.   Damien Carrick: Both your parents worked?   Yvonne Butler: Both my parents worked. My Dad, station owners that knew of my Dad, would see him and say "Oh, you must have that much money a kangaroo wouldn"t be able to jump over it."   Damien Carrick: Because he was a valued worker?   Yvonne Butler: Yes. And when he died in 1967, he apparently, from when I got his file in March of 2002, only had $99 in his account.   Damien Carrick: For how many years of work?   Yvonne Butler: Yes, well that last station he worked at, he worked there for 46 years and prior to that he worked on another station for 21 years.   Damien Carrick: Yvonne Butler, who never saw any of the money taken from her pay packet.   And about half of the roughly 16,000 eligible Queenslanders have applied for compensation.   Researcher Rosalind Kidd is the author of a new book: Trustees on Trial. It documents the paper trail of what happened to the money earned by people like Yvonne and her family.   Rosalind Kidd exposes widespread incompetence, indifference and outright fraud by those who oversaw the Queensland system. She estimates the total amount of money owed, unpaid pocket money and funds kept in trust, could be in the billions.   Rosalind Kidd: Well for Queensland it seems that probably half the Aboriginal population was brought under government control, and from the turn of last century, the government said, "Well everybody under control; we will contract you out to work whether you want to or not, 12 months at a time, away from your family; we will dictate what wage you get; we will take control of your money, and we will run your bank accounts.   And this actually operated, amazingly, into the early 1970s.   So what I discovered was the level of money that went missing, but more importantly and more horrifying for me was the awareness of the government, the warnings to the government from the earliest days that money was being defrauded, that employers who could pay a certain amount, it was called pocket money into people"s hands, that the government was warned that they never knew whether employers were paying that or not. And as late as the mid-1960s, the audit report then said that the government has absolutely no idea whether it was ever paid properly.   Now that could be as much as 80% of the wage. So immediately, even on that small factor, you"re looking at from the 1957 year, about $18 million potentially, they have no idea whether it was paid or not, $18 million in today"s terms. The remainder of the wage went to the police protector, which is the government agent.   The government was warned year after year after year, that the protectors were wrongly getting thumbprints on the dockets and I should say to the listeners that of course many Aboriginal people were not even given an education, so many could not sign their names, and the thumbprinting system, it wasn"t brought in till the 1930s.   So for 30 years, anybody could have a docket and say, "Oh yes, this was John"s money, and I paid him 10-pound, and there was no idea whether it was paid or not." But even after thumbprinting came in, the auditors used to say (the words they used): "They are so carelessly taken, as to be useless for verification."   Amazingly I discovered in the 1950s that all of the workers who were sent out from Brisbane, they didn"t even have a thumbprint database for them. Nor for the workers off the northern mission. So you get some idea, just from the wage itself, and we haven"t even touched on all the trust funds, all the child endowment or the inheritances, which were also taken by the government, and misused on many instances.   Damien Carrick: Where did the money go?   Rosalind Kidd: Well I think they used it to save themselves paying out from Treasury. The savings actually went into a trust fund, into a single savings account after 1933. As they said at the time, this was to minimise fraud by the police who are the protectors, so they knew perfectly well after 30 years, the fraud was so endemic. But what they did with those savings and there was about $16-million in today"s terms of Aboriginal savings.   Damien Carrick: And what year was that?   Rosalind Kidd: 1933. They had already planned, because I"ve seen the letters, they had already planned that they would take about 80% of those wages and put it into an investment, and the purpose of the investment was to raise revenue for Treasury.   Now I mean, you"ve got to think back and say to yourself "Well hang on a minute, if my money is in the bank, and if 80% of it is tied up in investment, it"s not even there when I ask to use it."   And I should say that time and time again on the accounts, people would say "Can I have some of my own money?" and they would be told, "No".   And what really makes you angry today as a researcher, is this letter will be sitting on the file, and at the bottom of it, somebody will have scrawled the amount that this person might have had, and it may be the equivalent of $3,000 or $4,000, and yet they are being told they are refused permission to buy a shirt for instance, or take their kid to see grandma in another town.
	View more stories