By James
Odong 13/6/2012
Over 7o
civilians were massacred on May 11, 1989 at Mukuru trading centre by some
indiscipline soldiers of the National Resistance Army (NRA). Our reporter James
Odong visited the area recently
I visited Mukura recently to get the firsthand account of the effects of a series of civil wars from Idi Amin to Milton Obote amd from Alice Lakwena and to Uganda People’s Army that characterized Teso region in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I started here because it is the site of a July 11, massacre of over 70 civilians by some indiscipline soldiers of the National Resistance Army (NRA).
On the day I visited, I meet Paul Eupu, seated around the local brew pot. Eupu, is a survivor of the massacre. Every time he goes near the site or talks about it, fresh memories of the incident come back.
“Whenever I come to this site, I cry. I did not want to come here but because of you, I had to,” he explains as he leads us to three buildings; a library, chapel and mausoleum built in memory of the dead.
Inside a newly built modest permanent house, open with no doors on either side, stands a mausoleum, where the remains of the dead are buried. Inscribed on the giant cross, are 55 names of the victims.
Eupu, was one of about 200 people, who were arrested in July 1989 by the then National Resistance Army (NRA) soldiers on allegations of being involved in rebel activities.
The Uganda Peoples’ Army (UPA), a rebel outfit headed by Peter Otai and based in Teso was fighting the NRM Government that had similarly shot itself to power in January 1986.
But during the war, lots of people suffered. Civilians were herded in detention centres, tortured and maimed while women and girls were raped and defiled by indisciplined soldiers, acting on their own, admits President Yoweri Museveni on his recent visit to Mukura monument.
The UPA also committed unspeakable atrocities on civilians. According to accounts from elderly eye witnesses, they forced sticks and machetes into private parts of women and girls, and they killed innocent civilians, destroying property and their livelihood.
According to the US based Human Rights Watch (HRW), over 50,000 people are estimated to have been killed between 1986 and 1997 in Teso region.
In Mukura sub-county, Ngora district, over 186 people were herded into a ware house of the railway station and for about five days, tied on a rope and matched to an adjacent tiny, congested, filthy and unventilated train wagon.
“We were beaten with sticks and butts of guns.
They beat anywhere — the head, the hands and the body. We were transferred from the warehouse to the wagon. It had no fresh air and there was too much heat. Those who died were immediately buried and those who still had energy continued to be tortured,” explains Eupu,.
There was no water or food. “Most people died of hunger, contrary to reports that they were roasted. The wagon was small, with no ventilation for fresh air, so we suffocated,” he says.
Survival also depended on who managed to reach the floor of the wagon. According to Eupu,, the Wagon was old and rusty and it had developed some holes but not big enough to breathe through.
“I put my nose next to the hole I got some fresh air. However, the holes were not enough, so, many of my friends died. We cried for help but the soldiers were determined to finish us,” he says.
Even after this survival, many could not live to tell their story. By the fifth day, 55 people had suffocated to death. Those who were unconscious were killed by soldiers who hit them with the butts of their guns. Those who survived continued to be tortured.
They paraded, questioned them and when they were satisfied they were innocent, they let them go.
According to Eupu, the soldiers who tortured them were let to go scotch free.
Eupu, comes from Kumel village, Mukura sub-county in Ngora district. He found his home, a ghost of its former.
“It was as quiet as a grave yard. My family had fled and there was nobody. I did not know where they had gone or where I could start from. I was in pain and did not have any medication,” adds a tearful Eupu,.
Using his own meager resources he had saved, Eupu, went to a nearby clinic and received treatment.
Survivors not compensated
Eupu, says despite the misery, nobody compensated them or took them to the hospital, they were simply arrested.
“They did not tell us why we were arrested. In July 1989, I was harvesting my millet when two soldiers came, beat us and took us to Ajeluk Primary School, where hundreds of other people had been arrested,”he said.
They were then taken to the Mukura sub-county, where the NRA brigade was stationed.
I visited Mukura recently to get the firsthand account of the effects of a series of civil wars from Idi Amin to Milton Obote amd from Alice Lakwena and to Uganda People’s Army that characterized Teso region in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I started here because it is the site of a July 11, massacre of over 70 civilians by some indiscipline soldiers of the National Resistance Army (NRA).
On the day I visited, I meet Paul Eupu, seated around the local brew pot. Eupu, is a survivor of the massacre. Every time he goes near the site or talks about it, fresh memories of the incident come back.
“Whenever I come to this site, I cry. I did not want to come here but because of you, I had to,” he explains as he leads us to three buildings; a library, chapel and mausoleum built in memory of the dead.
Inside a newly built modest permanent house, open with no doors on either side, stands a mausoleum, where the remains of the dead are buried. Inscribed on the giant cross, are 55 names of the victims.
Eupu, was one of about 200 people, who were arrested in July 1989 by the then National Resistance Army (NRA) soldiers on allegations of being involved in rebel activities.
The Uganda Peoples’ Army (UPA), a rebel outfit headed by Peter Otai and based in Teso was fighting the NRM Government that had similarly shot itself to power in January 1986.
But during the war, lots of people suffered. Civilians were herded in detention centres, tortured and maimed while women and girls were raped and defiled by indisciplined soldiers, acting on their own, admits President Yoweri Museveni on his recent visit to Mukura monument.
The UPA also committed unspeakable atrocities on civilians. According to accounts from elderly eye witnesses, they forced sticks and machetes into private parts of women and girls, and they killed innocent civilians, destroying property and their livelihood.
According to the US based Human Rights Watch (HRW), over 50,000 people are estimated to have been killed between 1986 and 1997 in Teso region.
In Mukura sub-county, Ngora district, over 186 people were herded into a ware house of the railway station and for about five days, tied on a rope and matched to an adjacent tiny, congested, filthy and unventilated train wagon.
“We were beaten with sticks and butts of guns.
They beat anywhere — the head, the hands and the body. We were transferred from the warehouse to the wagon. It had no fresh air and there was too much heat. Those who died were immediately buried and those who still had energy continued to be tortured,” explains Eupu,.
There was no water or food. “Most people died of hunger, contrary to reports that they were roasted. The wagon was small, with no ventilation for fresh air, so we suffocated,” he says.
Survival also depended on who managed to reach the floor of the wagon. According to Eupu,, the Wagon was old and rusty and it had developed some holes but not big enough to breathe through.
“I put my nose next to the hole I got some fresh air. However, the holes were not enough, so, many of my friends died. We cried for help but the soldiers were determined to finish us,” he says.
Even after this survival, many could not live to tell their story. By the fifth day, 55 people had suffocated to death. Those who were unconscious were killed by soldiers who hit them with the butts of their guns. Those who survived continued to be tortured.
They paraded, questioned them and when they were satisfied they were innocent, they let them go.
According to Eupu, the soldiers who tortured them were let to go scotch free.
Eupu, comes from Kumel village, Mukura sub-county in Ngora district. He found his home, a ghost of its former.
“It was as quiet as a grave yard. My family had fled and there was nobody. I did not know where they had gone or where I could start from. I was in pain and did not have any medication,” adds a tearful Eupu,.
Using his own meager resources he had saved, Eupu, went to a nearby clinic and received treatment.
Survivors not compensated
Eupu, says despite the misery, nobody compensated them or took them to the hospital, they were simply arrested.
“They did not tell us why we were arrested. In July 1989, I was harvesting my millet when two soldiers came, beat us and took us to Ajeluk Primary School, where hundreds of other people had been arrested,”he said.
They were then taken to the Mukura sub-county, where the NRA brigade was stationed.
“Recently,
President Yoweri Museveni asked to meet all the families of Mukura victims who
were killed. But, he did not meet us, the survivors.
He apologized and later promised them sh5m for each dead. But he did not talk about issues of the survivors, we are abandoned people,” he complains.
However, during the distribution of the money, the relatives received varying figures between sh1m to sh3m. This left many families bitter but also shocked about the amount.
“The President gave us sh200m to compensate for the over 69 people massacred by his NRA soldiers. Even this amount cannot compensate a dead person.
This is something but the Government should do better by atleast paying fees for children,” adds Joyce Esther Ruth Adiamo, 55, of Agirigiroi village,Kapir in Ngora district, whose husband, died in the train wagon leaving her with three children.
Adiamo says when her husband was killed; the family developed a miserable kind of life. “All of us became orphans. Losing a man in a family is a disaster because he provides everything. I could not send children to school or hire a garden to cultivate, so there was chronic hunger,” she says.
Most of her children dropped out of school and the family has been condemned to abject poverty.
Adiamo is also sick. Her legs are sick of an unknown disease and she cannot move one kilometer without falling down and yet she cannot afford medical care to take care of the sickness.
“I cannot farm for my children. Since they did not go to school, they have remained home, hopeless with no future. The money they gave us was very little.
I received about sh3m, used it to construct a small structure and it is over. If the Government was wise, they would have given each one of us sh200m or to educate our children up to university level,” adds.
Agnes Akiror Egunyu, the former Kumi district woman legislator, the person in charge of distributing the funds, claims that all the families of the 69 dead and five survivors shared the sh200m the President gave.
She, however, says money was not enough, so the relatives of the dead received sh3m and each survivor received between sh1–1.5m.
She admits that a few survivors may have not received their share because when they asked to see the survivors, more than 289 people came forward, and yet less than 30 people are said to have survived.
“Therefore, it became hard for us to distinguish between the real survivors and the fake ones among the 289. However, we very well know that less than 10 people are still surviving,” she said.
Bernard Eumu, LC5 district chairperson, Ngora district, says the war
harmed the people of Teso in all spheres. He explains that cattle that was the source of livelihood of the people was stolen.
“Cattle were used as oxen – plough to cultivate farms. This affected food production,” adds Eumu. He says this has forced Teso region to sink into an annual state of chronic hunger that devastates families.
By God’s mercy, the father of seven children is miraculously alive, but failing to come to terms with what he experienced.
According to Eupu, the physical beatings and torture broke his ribs, so he cannot sit up upright. “I cannot also do any other work because whenever I try, I collapse. This has incapacitated me from providing for my children. Ever since I was tortured, all my children dropped out of school,” he adds.
None of his children have gone beyond Primary seven and this has increased the poverty burden. Physically, Eupu also still experiences breathing difficulties and has to pause whenever he is talking.
He is psychologically and mentally challenged. According to him, he often experiences nightmares and sometimes tries to run away whenever he imagines that the NRA soldiers are coming to torture him.
“I am also not mentally stable. Sometimes I keep quiet and even if you talk to me, I find myself not responding and I do not realize this. I am only told later,” adds Eupu.
“I took three months to recover from physical pain. But I may never recover from the mental and psychological pain that I suffered.”
Mukura trading centre started as a cattle market in the 1920s, that eventually graduated into a train or railway stopover in the 1980s.
However, after the overthrow of Obote I regime in 1971, the centre suffered neglect and the railway deteriorated, with no business at all, during the economic turmoil that Uganda suffered. The eventual collapse of the centre started in 1979 when Idi Amin Dada was overthrown.
This was followed by the insurgency in the late 1980s that pitted the Government against UPA rebels that led to constant insecurity in the area, leading to the eventual collapse of Mukura and the suffocating of over 70 innocent civilians in a wagon, changing the social fabric of this tiny centre. ENDS.
He apologized and later promised them sh5m for each dead. But he did not talk about issues of the survivors, we are abandoned people,” he complains.
However, during the distribution of the money, the relatives received varying figures between sh1m to sh3m. This left many families bitter but also shocked about the amount.
“The President gave us sh200m to compensate for the over 69 people massacred by his NRA soldiers. Even this amount cannot compensate a dead person.
This is something but the Government should do better by atleast paying fees for children,” adds Joyce Esther Ruth Adiamo, 55, of Agirigiroi village,Kapir in Ngora district, whose husband, died in the train wagon leaving her with three children.
Adiamo says when her husband was killed; the family developed a miserable kind of life. “All of us became orphans. Losing a man in a family is a disaster because he provides everything. I could not send children to school or hire a garden to cultivate, so there was chronic hunger,” she says.
Most of her children dropped out of school and the family has been condemned to abject poverty.
Adiamo is also sick. Her legs are sick of an unknown disease and she cannot move one kilometer without falling down and yet she cannot afford medical care to take care of the sickness.
“I cannot farm for my children. Since they did not go to school, they have remained home, hopeless with no future. The money they gave us was very little.
I received about sh3m, used it to construct a small structure and it is over. If the Government was wise, they would have given each one of us sh200m or to educate our children up to university level,” adds.
Agnes Akiror Egunyu, the former Kumi district woman legislator, the person in charge of distributing the funds, claims that all the families of the 69 dead and five survivors shared the sh200m the President gave.
She, however, says money was not enough, so the relatives of the dead received sh3m and each survivor received between sh1–1.5m.
She admits that a few survivors may have not received their share because when they asked to see the survivors, more than 289 people came forward, and yet less than 30 people are said to have survived.
“Therefore, it became hard for us to distinguish between the real survivors and the fake ones among the 289. However, we very well know that less than 10 people are still surviving,” she said.
Bernard Eumu, LC5 district chairperson, Ngora district, says the war
harmed the people of Teso in all spheres. He explains that cattle that was the source of livelihood of the people was stolen.
“Cattle were used as oxen – plough to cultivate farms. This affected food production,” adds Eumu. He says this has forced Teso region to sink into an annual state of chronic hunger that devastates families.
By God’s mercy, the father of seven children is miraculously alive, but failing to come to terms with what he experienced.
According to Eupu, the physical beatings and torture broke his ribs, so he cannot sit up upright. “I cannot also do any other work because whenever I try, I collapse. This has incapacitated me from providing for my children. Ever since I was tortured, all my children dropped out of school,” he adds.
None of his children have gone beyond Primary seven and this has increased the poverty burden. Physically, Eupu also still experiences breathing difficulties and has to pause whenever he is talking.
He is psychologically and mentally challenged. According to him, he often experiences nightmares and sometimes tries to run away whenever he imagines that the NRA soldiers are coming to torture him.
“I am also not mentally stable. Sometimes I keep quiet and even if you talk to me, I find myself not responding and I do not realize this. I am only told later,” adds Eupu.
“I took three months to recover from physical pain. But I may never recover from the mental and psychological pain that I suffered.”
Mukura trading centre started as a cattle market in the 1920s, that eventually graduated into a train or railway stopover in the 1980s.
However, after the overthrow of Obote I regime in 1971, the centre suffered neglect and the railway deteriorated, with no business at all, during the economic turmoil that Uganda suffered. The eventual collapse of the centre started in 1979 when Idi Amin Dada was overthrown.
This was followed by the insurgency in the late 1980s that pitted the Government against UPA rebels that led to constant insecurity in the area, leading to the eventual collapse of Mukura and the suffocating of over 70 innocent civilians in a wagon, changing the social fabric of this tiny centre. ENDS.
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