[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 70 (Tuesday, May 11, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3532-S3533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            LRA DISARMAMENT AND NORTHERN UGANDA RECOVERY ACT

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, for more than 20 years, a group called the 
Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, has operated in central Africa, 
perpetrating some of the most horrific acts of violence one can 
envision. The LRA began as a rebel group saying it drew its guidance 
from the Ten Commandments, but in the two decades since it began, it 
has routinely violated those commandments in the most gruesome and 
unimaginable ways. Its continued campaign of violence calls out for 
Congress and the United States to act.
  Recently the United Nations uncovered the latest of the LRA's violent 
acts, the rounding up and massacring of more than 100 innocent 
villagers in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The 
New York Times reported on May 1 that U.N. officials had learned of the 
massacre, which occurred in February. U.N. officials interviewed 
several witnesses, including one woman whose lips were cut off by LRA 
rebels, who told the woman she was talking too much.
  The LRA's actions were described in brutally clear terms in a recent 
Human Rights Watch report entitled ``Trail of Death.'' In it Human 
Rights Watch investigators describe the typical tactics, techniques, 
and procedures of this terrible group of people:

       The LRA used similar tactics in each village they attacked 
     during their four-day operation: they pretended to be 
     Congolese and Ugandan army soldiers on patrol, reassured 
     people in broken Lingala (the common language of northern 
     Congo) not to be afraid, and, once people had gathered, 
     captured their victims and tied them up. LRA combatants 
     specifically searched out areas where people might gather--
     such as markets, churches, and water points--and repeatedly 
     asked those they encountered about the location of schools, 
     indicating that one of their objectives was to abduct 
     children. Those who were abducted, including many children 
     aged 10 to 15 years old, were tied up with ropes or metal 
     wire at the waist, often

[[Page S3533]]

     in human chains of five to 15 people. They were made to carry 
     the goods the LRA had pillaged and then forced to march off 
     with them. Anyone who refused, walked too slowly, or who 
     tried to escape was killed. Children were not spared.

  The LRA got its start in Uganda, where it has done and continues to 
do horrific damage. At one time, about 2 million Ugandans were 
displaced from their homes by LRA violence; the rebels massacred, 
mutilated and abducted civilians, and forced many into sexual 
servitude; and an estimated 66,000 Ugandan children were forced to 
fight for the group.
  Uganda is still recovering from the LRA's campaign of violence. 
Having been forced out of Uganda, LRA bands have moved into neighboring 
nations, including Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the 
Central African Republic--countries already ravaged by man-made and 
natural disasters. As the latest report shows, it is still a grave 
threat. As John Holmes, the U.N. under secretary general for 
humanitarian affairs, put it, ``they are still capable of wreaking 
absolute havoc--and they still do.''
  Because of the havoc the LRA has caused across central Africa, I am 
one of more than 60 Senators who have cosponsored S. 1067, the LRA 
Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, introduced by Senators 
Feingold and Brownback. The act would require that within 6 months, the 
United States develop a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the 
LRA, including an outline of steps to protect the civilian population 
against LRA violence. The act would authorize funding to provide 
humanitarian assistance in areas affected by the LRA. And it would 
provide assistance for reconstruction and for promotion of justice and 
reconciliation in areas of Uganda recovering from the LRA's 
depredations.
  This legislation would establish, as a matter of policy, a U.S. 
commitment to working with regional governments to end the conflict in 
Uganda and surrounding nations by providing support to multilateral 
efforts to protect civilians, apprehend top LRA leaders and disarm 
their followers; providing humanitarian assistance to relieve the 
immense suffering the LRA has caused; and supporting efforts to promote 
justice and reconciliation in the region affected by LRA violence.
  We have delayed too long in enacting this legislation. The Senate 
passed this important legislation in March, and the House Foreign 
Affairs Committee favorably reported the bill to the full House last 
week. I am hopeful that the committee's approval signals the likelihood 
of approval by the full House soon. I hope our colleagues in the House 
will move swiftly to pass this legislation and send it to the President 
for his signature; to do anything less would be a failure to act with 
the urgency, and the humanity, that the LRA's campaign of terror 
demands.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a recent New York Times 
article on this incident be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From the New York Times, May 1, 2010]

            U.N. Says Congo Rebels Killed Scores in Village

                         (By Jeffrey Gettleman)

       Kisangani, Congo--United Nations officials said Saturday 
     that the Lord's Resistance Army rebel force killed up to l00 
     people in a previously unreported massacre in the remote 
     northeastern corner of this country.
       Details are still emerging of exactly what happened. But 
     according to John Holmes, the United Nation's top 
     humanitarian official, the L.R.A. struck a small village in 
     February, two months after it killed more than 300 people 
     from several villages in the surrounding area.
       United Nations investigators have spoken with several 
     witnesses and victims of the massacre in February, including 
     two fishermen who said they saw dozens of bodies.
       But the investigators have been unable to reach the exact 
     location because of the difficulties of traveling in one of 
     the most rugged and isolated corners of Africa.
       Mr. Holmes said that while recent military operations may 
     have weakened the L.R.A., ``they are still capable of 
     wreaking absolute havoc--and they still do.''
       He said he learned about the February attack on Saturday, 
     when he met with local authorities and victims in Niangara, 
     an old trading post hidden away in the Congolese jungle that 
     has recently been ringed by roving bands of L.R.A. marauders.
       One of the people he met was a young woman whose lips had 
     been sliced off last month. She was attacked by rebels while 
     working in her field, she said Saturday, sitting in a 
     hospital bed, her face a mask of gauze and tape.
       ``They told me I was talking too much,'' she said.
       The L.R.A. has been waging a brutal and bizarre rebellion 
     for more than 20 years, starting in northern Uganda in the 
     late 1980s.
       Originally, it said it was guided by the Ten Commandments, 
     but soon it was breaking every one, massacring and mutilating 
     civilians and becoming notorious for kidnapping young 
     children and turning them into 4-foot-tall killing machines.
       The Ugandan Army eventually drove the L.R.A. out of Uganda 
     but the rebels simply marched into neighboring northeastern 
     Congo, where they set up bases in isolated areas.
       Recently, the Ugandan military has killed dozens of 
     fighters hiding out in Congo and the Central African 
     Republic, though the L.R.A.'s leader, Joseph Kony, who has 
     been indicted by the International Criminal Court on crimes 
     against humanity, is still on the loose.
       In the December massacre, the L.R.A. killed more than 300 
     people in a brutal recruitment campaign near Niangara, in 
     which a few dozen rebel fighters abducted hundreds of 
     civilians, marching them in a human chain from village to 
     village. Along the way, the fighters beat to death men, women 
     and children they did not want to keep in their ranks.
       ``For anyone saying that the L.R.A. is finished, I would be 
     careful not to count them out,'' Mr. Holmes said. ``They have 
     an amazing capacity to regenerate themselves, especially by 
     kidnapping children.''

                          ____________________