Church leaders in north Uganda have spent the Sunday night
on verandahs of Gulu town to highlight the plight of thousands of children who
leave their homes in the suburbs, fearful of being abducted by rebels, and come
to sleep on the town's streets.
"We have decided to take [this] action to show our solidarity with the
most vulnerable of our suffering people, the children," the Acholi
Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI), a grouping of Roman Catholic,
Protestant, Greek Orthodox and Muslim leaders, said in a statement on Monday.
Thousands of children, some of them as young as seven, converge in the streets
of Gulu town every evening from their homes in outlying areas to avoid being
abducted by Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, who force boys to fight
against government troops, and girls to become rebel commanders' concubines.
"It pains us to see that these children cannot sleep peacefully at their
homes and they come every night to sleep in that inhumane way because they
don't feel protected", the ARLPI statement said.
Religious leaders who will be "sleeping for days on the verandahs"
include Roman Catholic Archbishop John Baptist Odama, who also chairs ARLPI,
along with his colleagues from the other four denominations.
Social workers in Gulu town estimate that there are over 60 000
displaced people living in huts on the fringes of the town, in addition to 800
000 people living in pathetic conditions in internally displaced persons' (IDP)
camps in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, all hard hit by the LRA rebellion.
The LRA rose up against the government of Uganda in 1988, ostensibly with the
aim of replacing it with a regime based on the Bible's Ten Commandments.
But that objective is belied by the cruelty of the rebels' campaign, marked by
abductions and brutal killings of civilians.
Thousands of people in northern Uganda have been maimed and killed in the LRA's
15-year fight to oust the government.
Catholic priest Carlos Rodriguez said that religious leaders on Sunday evening
walked to Gulu like the children do from their homes.
"These are our children, some have died of pneumonia because of the
cold," he said referring to many who sleep in the open despite the fact
that it is the rainy season in the region.
"We shall just carry out blankets as the children do, so as to highlight
their plight to the world," he added.