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Is the People's Redemption Army a Benevolent Rebel Group?

The Monitor (Kampala)

COLUMN
20 October 2007
Posted to the web 22 October 2007

By Sam Akaki

Its only raid, yet, took place over 6,000 kilometres from the nearest Uganda
border -- in the British House of Commons on March 9, 2003, when the Liberal
Democrat Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, Mr Mike Hancock asked the
then Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Mr Jack Straw this question:
"What recent assessment he has made of (a) the strength, (b) leadership and (c)
political objectives of the Ugandan People's Redemption Army (PRA); how long it
has been active; and what assessment he has made of whether it has attacked any
city or village or caused damage to Uganda's infrastructure?"
If you have lived, or still live in the once rebel-infested regions of Luwero,
Acholi, Lango, Teso, West Nile and Kasese; or if you are an observer of rebel
activities in Africa; you would have appreciated Mr Hancock's question. It is
the answers to these questions, which are the only parameters of conclusively
defining a rebel army.
The answers to similar questions about rebel activities will send a chill
through the hardest spine. Consider, the horrific brutality of these groups:
Velupillai Pirapaharan's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka, which
has blown up three national leaders including Premier Rajiv Gandhi of India.
They have recently started using their "home-made" air force planes to raid
government positions.
Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone, which created
'short-sleeves' by cutting off the arms of their victims including infant
babies; and ripping open pregnant women's bellies in search of weapons.
Sudan's Janjawid militia which, according to the US State Department, is
engaged in acts of genocide in Darfur, western Sudan where they have killed
300,000 civilians and displaced two million people.
John Garang's Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army which, according to John
Prendergast, the former US director of East African affairs at the National
Security Council, massacred 200,000 women, children and elderly in Ganyiel
region in south Sudan.
The Interahamwe of Rwanda, which allegedly killed about one million Tustis and
moderate Hutus in 100 days in 1994; and Jonas Savimbi's União Nacional para a
Independência Total de Angola (Unita), which terrorised his country for 35
years, planted landmines to last years and stole diamonds and other minerals
worth $55 billion.
Prof. Wamba Dia Wamba's Rally for Congolese Democracy, Jean-Pierre Bemba's MLC;
Allied Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (Alliance des Forces
Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaire (AFDL) and Mai-Mai militia,
which between them slaughtered over four million Congolese, cannibalising some,
according to a recent UN report.
Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army (NRA), which indiscriminately
attacked civilian and military installations; robbed banks and hospitals in the
western region and hijacked a Uganda Airlines passenger plane.
And Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which for 21 years has killed
over 300,000 people, maimed more, abducted and dehumanised 200,000 and driven
almost two million men, women and children into concentration camps known as
Internally Displaced persons camps.
According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, these rebel groups
have, between them, killed 79 million people, maimed twice as many and
displaced over 107 million. Recently, the Daily Monitor reported that the total
monetary cost of rebel wars in Africa has reached £153 billion. ("Govt spends
153bn on Kony per year", DM, October 12)
It was against these grim statistics that Mr Hancock asked his government to
tell the world whether the PRA is also a "typical" rebel group, inhumanly
brutal.
In response, the then Foreign Office Minister Chris Mullin said "The Ugandan
government alleged shortly after the 2001 presidential elections that the
People's Redemption Army (PRA) is an armed group which has been attempting to
establish itself in north-western Uganda. We have seen no evidence of this, or
that the PRA represents any threat to Uganda's stability".
It is inconceivable that Mr Mullin dreamed up this answer. He must have been
briefed by a British Military Attaché at their High Commission in Kampala.
According to the Diplomat's Dictionary (Chas Freeman, 1994), "the function of a
military attaché is information gathering and reporting, normally by overt
methods, and advising his country either directly or through the resident
ambassador".
In any event, one does not need the British to confirm whether PRA exists.
After all, they were not the ones who confirmed the existence of Museveni's NRA
or Kony's LRA. The brutality of these rebel groups spoke volumes.
The docile nature of the alleged PRA raises many burning questions: Why, for
seven years, has the PRA not attacked the government it was allegedly set up to
fight? Why has Dr Kizza Besigye and several other Ugandans been physically,
mentally and psychologically tortured accused for belonging to a rebel group
which has never stolen an egg or slapped anyone.
Why have Cosma Komakech and thirteen other innocent Ugandans been kept in
detention since 2003, while David Oboma and others have died, and still others
have "disappeared" from detention in the name of the alleged PRA?

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