Fear, graft and silence shroud Uganda sex attacks

June 23, 2005 - (Reuters) When the young Ugandan realised the woman he had raped in the dark of the refugee camp was his mother, he hung himself from a beam in their hut.

The incident shocked even his neighbours, hardened as they are by years of sheltering from clashes between government troops and brutal rebels that have torn their homeland apart.

Scores of squalid, tightly-packed settlements scattered across the region are home to 1.6 million people forced from their homes by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency.

As the rebels murder, kidnap and mutilate victims who venture out in a desperate search for food, sexual violence is growing at an alarming rate inside the camps, according to a major new study carried out in the north's biggest camp, Pabbo.

Poverty, idleness and alcohol are main causes, residents said, but the true scale of the problem is hidden because most women do not report cases for fear of being stigmatised.

As is often the case in African conflicts, rape is used to intimidate, as a weapon in family feuds, and they said many women feared being attacked in revenge if they spoke out.

WARRIORS
Pabbo is home to about 67,000 refugees, more than 70 percent of them women and children. It only has six policemen, working out of a tiny, shabby building.

The camp's first policewoman begins work next month, but residents said they expected she would make little difference.

Some men said they blamed Western aid workers in the camp for promoting women's rights, which they said caused friction in their deeply traditional -- and traumatised -- society.

Female "empowerment" had led to arguments, they said, and much worse.

"As Africans, when a man is talking, a woman should keep quiet," district police commander Richard Mivule told a meeting in Gulu this month on how to stamp out sexual attacks.

"You can study European ways of doing things in books, but the African way of understanding is that if you bring in the law so much, you find that every family is broken."

Alexander Obina, a government security agent working in Pabbo, said wives now felt free to ignore their husbands, something which raised tensions in a family.

Another man, camp resident Semei Okwir, denied there was a culture of silence, adding that women were not reporting marital rape because under their ethnic Acholi culture, it (marital rape) was a "normal thing".

Researchers said sex attacks are part of everyday life in Pabbo, where poor living conditions, drug and alcohol abuse and a lack of any jobs has left men idle and frustrated.

RAPE COMMON
Life in the overcrowded camps has stripped Acholi men of their traditional role as warriors and protectors, while women continue their vital work feeding and caring for families. The imbalance has led to more frustration, attacks and abuse.

Rape is now the most common form of violence in Pabbo, according to the new study by U.N. children's charity UNICEF.

It found girls aged from 13 to 17 were most likely to suffer sexual violence, followed by older women, then children aged four to nine. Attacks were carried out by relatives, strangers and Ugandan government troops, it said.

Many victims suffered severe mental trauma and sickness including HIV/AIDS, it added, but their treatment was hobbled by a lack of qualified medical staff and supplies, as well as the absence of government programmes to tackle the violence.

In addition to the fear of being rejected by their neighbours, residents say women face huge challenges reporting rapes and assaults, including official corruption.

"The police are corrupt, we all know that," researcher Isabella Amony told the meeting. "You can't expect someone to report their case to the police where she will be asked to pay a 'fee'. People in Pabbo don't have that kind of money."

IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY
Constantine Okwir, assistant inspector of police at the camp, denied taking bribes, but told Reuters they were forced to ask for money to drive victims and suspects 20 km (12 miles) to Gulu, since Pabbo has no court.

Member of parliament Jane Alisemera said she was shocked at the state of the camp's dilapidated police post.

"You can't really help a girl in such a place. Is it a police station or is it a toilet?" she asked the meeting.

Crucially, local aid workers said the police station also has no space for interviewing victims and suspects separately, scaring many women into silence.

Donors say they are training the police, army and camp leaders about sexual violence, and that they will continue raising awareness of women's rights.

Mivule promised to post more officers to the camp, "irrespective of the constraints", but a top local official said as long as frequent clashes continued between troops and the rebels, that was unlikely.

"In a war situation like ours, you can only talk about police when the situation has subsided," regional district commissioner Max Omeda said. "You cannot just deploy police in the camps and then leave them in the hands of the enemy."

From: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17460596.htm