If I did not reveal that I was formerly abducted, nobody would know. If I did not tell that these children were born from captivity, nobody would know  — Beatrice Ocwee

 

If I did not tell you that I was abducted, you will not know because most people who returned were violent and would threaten to kill when they quarrel. But me, I did not do that. It is why my neighbors were not treating me badly. — Samuel Akena

For more than 20 years, rebels with the Lord’s Resistance Army abducted 60,000 people from towns and villages in Northern Uganda, many of them young girls and boys who were then forced to fight, kill, and loot. Young girls spent years in captive marriages, forced to bear the children of LRA commanders.

Where were the local police and government troops? How was this allowed to happen to so many children over the course of so many years? Where was the international community?

This week, Life of the Law reporter Gladys Oroma presents the third part of our special series following the lives of Beatrice Ocwee and Samuel Akena, two of the thousands of children who were abducted from their homes in northern Uganda and held captive by LRA rebels beginning in the 1980’s through 2008.

In Part 1: ABDUCTED Beatrice and Samuel share their lives before they were captured by the LRA, the night they were abducted from their homes, and their march into captivity.

In Part 2: ESCAPE no longer the children they were when they were abducted, years after they were abducted, Beatrice and Samuel share their terrifying attempts to escape, and their fear of the Ugandan troops.

THIS WEEK, Life of the Law presents Part 3: JUSTICE as Beatrice and Samuel try to return home with the children and the trauma they now carry.

Part 3 – JUSTICE
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Production Notes:

UGANDA: PART 3 – JUSTICE was reported by Gladys Oroma and was produced in partnership with Teddy Atim, Researcher in Kampala, Uganda; Annie Bunting, Scholar at York University in Toronto and the Conjugal Slavery in War SSHRC Partnership at csiw-ectg.org; and Life of the Law’s Executive Producer, Nancy Mullane and Senior Producer, Tony Gannon.

The series was edited by Nancy Mullane with sound design by Tony Gannon.  Our Post Production Editor is Rachael Cain. Special thanks to Ian Coss for his production assistance and Daphne Keevil Harrold for her editing and fact-checking and Rosebell Kagumire for her early production work on the series.