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Secret Photos Reveal New African Horrors
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ShareMay 18, 2007 11:16 AM
Documentary filmmakers in Uganda were subjected to intimidation and coercion and were the victims of break-ins while attempting to film what a former U.N. official calls "Uganda's secret genocide" in the northern part of that country. The filmmakers say these threats came from Ugandan officials and secret intelligence organizations there.
The cameraman for an American film crew, who did not want to release his name in fear of further retaliation, says he was robbed of videotapes and CDs of photos after filming major human rights abuses in Uganda last year.
The cameraman told ABC News an official had told him that "he [the official] had so many ways to deal with me in order to stop me from reporting things [that] either portrays him as a person and/or the government in a bad light."
Viewer Discretion Advised: Photos of Uganda's Secret Horrors
Despite the efforts at intimidation, the filmmakers obtained dramatic footage of what they say is fresh evidence of atrocities and inhumane living conditions in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, where millions of displaced Ugandan minorities live in squalor and disease. The filmmakers says it's a humanitarian crisis that has been covered up by the Ugandan government and largely ignored by the Western media.
"We walked across mass graves, through an inferno of burning huts and across a field of bodies that were just left to decompose by a government that didn't even care enough to dig a hole and bury them," said Tiffany Gravel, the American director, as she recounted her trip through Uganda's northern civil war-ravaged countryside in 2006.
The documentary, "Abila Pe," which translates from native Lwo as "The Shrine is Gone," is the story of the Acholi people who were "involved in a civil war and ends with a forgotten genocide," according to the rough DVD trailer released to ABC News.
"It's a huge conspiracy of silence about the genocide which has been committed in northern Uganda," said Olara A. Otunnu, the former U.N. undersecretary-general and special representative for children and armed conflict.
Otunnu told ABC News Gravel's documentary is important because it shows rarely seen images and tells the story about how the Ugandan government "stripped the [Acholi minority] from their homes, and those who wouldn't move were killed, and the rest were herded into concentration camps."
"The Acholi people in the camps are now dying at 1,500 deaths per week," Otunnu told ABC News. "That's three times the death rate in Darfur. No wonder they want this covered up."
The Ugandan government, however, denies these claims. "Nobody forced anybody to come to the camps," said Col. Charles Angina from the Ugandan Embassy. "These are lies," he says.
Angina further denied any intimidation or threats toward Gravel or her film crew by the Ugandan government.
But, according to a recent report by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in northern Uganda, "approximately 1.2 million IDPs reside in overcrowded camps where mortality rates remain above emergency levels, largely as a result of inadequate water availability, poor sanitary conditions, and the spread of diseases."
The Ugandan government says it created refugee camps for displaced people who were victims of a violent, ongoing civil conflict with a rebel group from the north called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
"Once the bad guys come, the terrorist groups come to the area, people are forced to run where they think they can have sufficient security. They become displaced because they have nothing," Angina said.
While the government and its critics argue over the death rate in the camps, both sides agree that millions have been displaced -- mostly the Acholi people -- whose cultural traditions have been nearly wiped out because of the civil war and the dislocation, according to the USAID.
Despite the intimidation and threats to her crew, Gravel hopes the images of war-torn villages and testimonials of the victims in her documentary will provide enough proof for more investigation.
"Whether or not you call what is happening in northern Uganda genocide or not, what's happening to the Acholi people is wrong. No human being should be forced to live in the conditions that the Acholi are forced to live in every day," she said.
May 18, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (177)
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Do YOU care?
Posted by: Jazz | May 18, 2007 11:37:23 AM
what can we, as individuals who DO CARE, do about this?
Posted by: nancy | May 18, 2007 12:26:24 PM
What can we do when we do care? When there is so much in the world that requires our attention? How does one little American who is struggling to feed her own children affect a change around this messed up world?
Posted by: wendy | May 18, 2007 12:34:34 PM
Who do I contact to Help remove this Idiot from Power, he makes Sadam look like a heavenly saint.
Posted by: realityplz | May 18, 2007 12:35:42 PM
My heart is crying for these people.....why do I see pictures of Paris Hilton in jail and are made to feel sorry for her when these innocent people are being killed. America's media sucks!!!! Shame on you!!!
Posted by: Rita Kay | May 18, 2007 12:36:12 PM
I certainly do care.
Posted by: Hilary | May 18, 2007 12:36:21 PM
Some "culture", eh?
Posted by: Dutch | May 18, 2007 12:39:48 PM
How terribly pitiful that we have all these human beings subjected to starvation, torture and God knows what else. No one with any influence or clout gives a damn because there is nothing to be gained by our intervention. They don't have oil fields in Uganda.
Posted by: plbhess | May 18, 2007 12:52:10 PM
Too bad there wasn't oil here. Then our administration would take notice of these atrocities.
Posted by: jPoz | May 18, 2007 12:52:52 PM
Too bad Uganda and Darfar don't have oil. Then maybe the U.S. government would have an interest in "helping" these people. Too bad they have nothing we want. If they were white that might help too.
Posted by: Tony | May 18, 2007 12:59:10 PM
I actually care a great deal. What can we do? (Seriously!)
Images like these always eat me up inside. I feel helpless that this stuff is going on.
Posted by: TOny | May 18, 2007 1:03:30 PM
Please GOD help us help these people.
Posted by: Dorothea | May 18, 2007 1:06:22 PM
Yes, We do care, but what can I do when I'm struggling myself financially.All I can think of is prayer, but these people need more than prayer. I feel helpless and even guilty, that these things are still going on to innocent people. Lord help them!
Posted by: lana Holland | May 18, 2007 1:26:16 PM
When is our government going to stop making money of gas and stop blowing GAS and help these human being.
Posted by: Lin | May 18, 2007 1:33:06 PM
When reading something like this it absolutely amazes me that we as a civilation, and we as one of the most powerfuly countries on Earth would not investigate this further. Someone in our government, perhaps the President himself should call the Ugandan Embassy authorities into the White House and ask them to explain. I agree, if Uganda had anything that we wanted we would be preventing this.
Posted by: Jim | May 18, 2007 1:34:12 PM
It just might take an African American President TO DO SOMETHING about this.......
Posted by: Cary | May 18, 2007 1:34:42 PM
Alas, the reason we cannot directly help these people is because other atrocities have occurred in other parts of the world, i.e., Iraq (300k+ iraqies killed by Sadam since gulf war I) and then we tormented those in charge for each soldier who is killed trying to prevent further atrocities. Same with korea, vietnam, kosovo, afganistan, etc.
Hence for all you bleeding hearts who are so upset about these images, they would be followed by killed US or collation soldiers, should we have the inclination to become involved – at which point, you or other people like you would start to ask and wail “why are we there?”
Note: this is exactly what happened with Afghanistan – there is no oil there and we are now seriously upset whereas if you would only press the rewind button and look at PBS from before the conflict and you would see that it was “going to be the worst humanitarian catastrophe ever and if only some world super power would get involved”…
So what do you want – tens or hundreds of thousands of dead little black kids and women you’ve never heard of and don’t know their names OR merely hundreds of dead little black kids and women you don’t know their names and a few hundred dead UN soldiers who you will know their names and entire life histories as well as get to see and hear the views expressed by their grieving families?
Posted by: Mike | May 18, 2007 1:36:28 PM
Its very simple, the more we know the more we can change.
Posted by: jaden | May 18, 2007 1:48:29 PM
This will continue to happen, until we as a nation, unite for justice..reason..sanity.
Im not holding my breath.
Posted by: John | May 18, 2007 1:51:39 PM
This is an atrocity - humanity at its worst. How do we help - by letting the world see what is going on. Why does the US have to be the only world force - what about the middle eastern countries, asia, europe - the UN. Like another writer, if we sent troops, the leftist media would make them look like killers. yes, the middle east conflict is about oil because if the bad-guys control the oil, that means $10/gallon gas prices (or higher) as well as higher cost of goods on petroleum based products, such as plastics. I pray for the people in Uganda and Darfur. I pray that the evil warmongers of Africa will be removed.
Posted by: renee | May 18, 2007 1:57:45 PM
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