The terminal where the famous Entebbe Airport hostage rescue occurred in 1976 still stands today near the new terminal in Uganda।
The rescue by the Israeli defense forces was a huge embarrassment to dictator Idi Amin, who blamed Kenya by accusing them of colluding with the Israelis and ordered the murder of hundreds of their civilians in Uganda।
The crisis began on June 27 1976 when four Palestinian militants seized an Air France flight, flying from Israel to Paris via Athens, with 250 people on board।
The hijackers - two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two from Germany's Baader-Meinhof- diverted the plane to Entebbe, where it arrived on June 28।
The hijackers demanded the release of 53 militants held in jails in Israel and four other countries।
Idi Amin arrived at the airport to give a speech in support of the hijackers and supplied them with extra troops and weapons.
On July 1 the hijackers released a large number of hostages but continued to hold captive the remaining 100 passengers who were Israelis or Jews।
Those who were freed were flown to Paris and London।
The crew were offered the chance to go but chose to stay with the plane।
The remaining hostages were transferred to the airport building with the hijackers backed up by Ugandan soldiers।
The hijackers then set a deadline for 11am for their demands to be met or they would blow up the airliner and its passengers, but their plan was foiled।
Ugandan soldiers and the hijackers were taken completely by surprise when three Hercules transport planes landed after a 2,500-mile trip from Israel।
About 200 commandos ran out and stormed the airport building।
During a 35-minute battle, 20 Ugandan soldiers and all seven hijackers died along with three hostages and the leader of the Israeli assault।
The Israelis destroyed 11 Russian-built MiG fighters, which amounted to a quarter of Uganda's air force।
The surviving hostages were then flown to Israel with a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya, where some of the injured were treated by Israeli doctors and at least two transferred to hospital there.
Many would know Idi Amin from his portrayal by actor Forest Whitaker in the hit movie The Last King of Scotland – told through the story of a young Scottish doctor who becomes one of his close advisers.
He is one of the world’s most famous crazed tyrants – having become ultra paranoid, he killed over 250,000 of his suspected opponents and brutally tortured tens of thousands more.
His love of anything Scottish is the reason why today visiting true Scots are advised not to wear Scottish jerseys, because Amin is the dictator that Ugandan's try to forget.
One of his former wives was found with her limbs dismembered in the boot of a car.
Amin ordered that they be sewn back together with the torso so that he and her children could go and see the body.
Members of his chief justice, ministers, even church leaders were taken away by special guards – never to be seen again.
Henry Kyemba, Amin’s former Health Minister, said that he performed blood rituals on many of his victims.
Amin once boasted to him that he had eaten human flesh, and it is said he kept the heads of some victim’s in fridges.
Idi Amim began his climb to power while Uganda was under British rule.
He was a commissioned officer when Uganda won independence in 1962 – despite being a concern to the British military because of his illiteracy or lack of any schooling.
He was recruited by the British in 1946 to serve as a trainee cook in the Kings African Rifles.
British officers admired his loyalty – and his successes in sport, which included being the national heavy weight boxer and as a rugby player.
He was posted to Kenya as a corporal during a British campaign where he excelled in his brutality during the torture of prisoners – and rose again to sergeant major.
After murdering three tribesmen in Kenya Amin faced a court martial, but the prime minster Milton Obote merely reprimanded him allowing Amin to keep climbing until he eventually became one of Obote’s top officers.
Amin eventually seized power from Obote while he was away at a commonwealth conference forcing him into exiule in Tanzania.
Amin’s 1971 coup met little resistance and the new president became a national hero – touring the country making many promises of good times ahead.
He feared a counter attack from Obote so established death squads to eradicate opponents – which saw the mass killing of the Langi and Acholi tribes people he thought supported Obote.
“It was impossible to dispose of the bodies,” recalled a former Amin minster.
They were dumped in the Nile instead.
These massacred tribes would face further attacks from the Lords Resistance Army years later.
Amin had no idea how to run an economy and would routinely order banks to just print cash when his budgets ran out.
As the economy plundered under his rule he ordered the expulsion of all Asian’s – in an attempt to boost his popularity.
A total of 50,000 left, including many doctors, dentists, businessmen, technicians and professors – resulting in government revenues being cut by 40 per cent over night.
Among his self awarded titles were president for life, conqueror of the British empire and “the true heir to throne of Scotland.”
He often tried to impress African diplomats by mocking the British,.
At a UN meeting he praised the Palestinians who killed Israel’s Olympic participants and even said Hitler was right to kill six million Jews.
The end of his tyranny came in 1979 when he ordered the invasion of Kagera salient in northern Tanzania – allowing his troops to loot and plunder at will.
Tanzania responded with 45,000 troops and decided to invade Uganda forcing Amin to flee to Saudi Arabia where he died in 2003.
His rule left Uganda broke, lawless and ravaged and with a death toll of over 250,000.
Obote regained power in 1980 in disputed elections plunging Uganda in an anarchic civil war –and the further death of an estimated 300,000 civilians.
By the time Obote lost power in 1985 Uganda was amongst the poorest countries in the world.
The road to Kineni used to be one of the most dangerous in all of Uganda up until about three years ago, Michael Caritan of the Trocaire funded Caritas organisation tells me as we approach the parish camp.
“You could not drive here without being shot at by the LRA who hid all along either side,” he said.
The red dust road, like most in Uganda, is covered in obstacles like massive bumps and deep potholes, so four wheel drive vehicles are essential – yet many Ugandans somehow manage with old cars in dire need of repair.
Many Ugandans cycle bicycles on which they also manage to carry large wood, grass and water.
Women walk along roadsides with big heavy bags of potatoes, seed or water balanced perfectly on their heads – and they somehow manage to keep their composure.
There are 2,500 people living in the Kineni camp in north Uganda while they wait patiently in hope of moving back to their original homelands.
While driving, Michael points in the direction where 30km away just four years ago the LRA cooked a man alive before forcing his other family members to eat pieces of him.
“They inflicted fear by using methods such as these,” he said.
At the camp about 50 small children, many with large malnourished bellies, surround us, staring at the “mono”, which is white person in their language.
A girl of about four stands shyly with the group, with a plastic wrapper on her head in the shape of a crown.
A little boy of about three years approaches us “mono” slowly, but just as one of the group says hello, or foyer matek (which means thanks) his face drops into tears and he scatters in search of his mother, erupting the whole camp into laughter.
Scores of people approach is in what is like the meeting area of the camp to shake our hands and welcome us.
“You are very, very welcome, thank you for coming,” said one of the English speaking members of the camp council.
This is copied by the children who put up their hands for them to be shaken.
The camp is made up of around 520 round houses of clay with straw roofs, that have inside them one or two old mattresses with pots, tools and water containers scattered around and clothes drying on lines or on top of the straw roof.
Between the homes goats and wild dogs walk about, some sleeping in the shade from the scorching hit midday sun.
Children run laughing and playing and women press seeds and cook pea soup or some other food - similar to how you would imagine it was done at ancient Viking and Celtic villages.
One group of boys play a game like marbles with rolled up pieces of dried mud, and others use sling shots trying to kill birds.
The Acholi tribe people are very polite and courteous, and very open and frank in their responses to questions during interviews about their lives.
As I make my way through the camp every single person acknowledges me, and some ask that I photograph them.
Heading back to the meeting area I hear drum beats, women singing and people clapping.
The entire camp is sitting around a dancing circle of women, most wearing what look like second hand charity clothing.
We are sat at a front row of seats with Sean Farrell of Trocaire and the guys from Caritas.
The women continue to dance to loud beats made by two men, one banging a drum, the other the end of a plastic container.
Michael Caritan of Caritas tells me that the dancing is a huge part of the Acholi way of life – each dance having a meaning.
“This is a dance for women, moving in their own way to the beat in a circle. It is a welcoming dance,” he says.
Suddenly a drunken man gets up from the ground and starts to dance with them – moving as the women do – erupting the gathered camp into laughter.
They make gestures for him to sit down.
When he gets in the way of the movement of the dance, two women pull him away while trying to control their laughter.
After the dancing, there are formal introductions, which start with the camp elders and council members who are in charge of different areas of the camp.
Each one stands up and says his or her name before telling us their ranking in the group.
When they are finished, it is our turn.
I tell them that I am Kevin Jenkinson from a land afar away called Ireland where people care very much about the needs of the Acholi people and where they want to know about the suffering they have gone through.
I thank them for their courteous welcome and sit back down while they clap their hands.
Sean Farrell of Trocaire then asks them if there is anything they would like to discuss – and they respond in turn with issues such as a lack of drinking water and land mines preventing them from going to their homesteads.
A woman with a walking stick who had feared the Trocaire solar lights would electrocute her to death, thanked Sean for the light.
She said it doesn’t catch fire to her cotton, like her old paraffin burner, and also allows her son to read his school books.
After agreeing on the small €2 contribution to the €20 solar lamps – Sean responds to their problems by telling them “We are here for the long term.”
“These are a brilliant people with so many needs who have gone through unspeakable hardship and tragedy,” he told me after speaking to the camp.
They offer to continue dancing for us, but it’s getting late and being on a road at night time can be fatal.
A rare thing also occurs for this time of year as we explain we must leave. It starts to rain, but it it is very brief and not enough to water a field of dry seeds or crops.
As we get up to leave the entire camp gathers around us waving goodbye and shaking our hands.
We are told we are “most welcome” to visit again.
We leave knowing that all the worries people talk about in Ireland are nothing compared to the needs of these incredibly tough and friendly people.
Artificial light, safe drinking water and good food are just some of the simple needs of northern Ugandan’s – who are millions of miles away from having an economy that could afford to have a recession like Ireland’s.
The world recession has affected them - but only by the cuts in foreign aid budgets, which the people here would be devastated without.
These are a friendly and hugely polite people, who worry about just being able to live each day in the severe hardship and poverty they are in – and many young children are very malnourished.
They rely so much on NGO organisations like Caritas Pader, who are funded by Trocaire, to help them return to their homesteads and to get the things they need to become self sufficient once again.
Almost two million of them lived peacefully with their own crops and animals to provide food and money, but since 1996 they were all put into “displacement camps” by their government because of the war with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
The government destroyed their homesteads so that they would not return during the conflict and their food and animals were stolen.
The Acholi tribe in north Uganda dominate the remote Pader district where myself and photographer Noel Gavin met with the people of two “return camps” that provide them with more space and services than the displacement camps – and are located near their homesteads, where they all intend to return to.
Pader was the location of the first rehabilitation centre for escaped child soldiers from the LRA, because it was so close to where the LRA operated their reign of bloody terror in Uganda.
All over the region there are people building huts in their former homesteads, but there remains hundreds of thousands of people living in camps, some of which are very cramped with bad sanitation.
Everyone here has lost someone to AIDS or from the war with the LRA.
Atto Christine (20) of the Lagwai parish camp in Pader, who has one child of her own and mothers the five children of her dead sister, spoke to me outside her house wearing an old Arsenal FC polo shirt.
Most Ugandan's support the big English soccer clubs and gather around any available TV in their hundreds in a town or city every weekend to see the games.
She described how a simple solar powered lamp has hugely improved her life.
She lives in a straw roofed hut in the middle of an entire region that has no electricity – so at night it is pitch black.
She said through a translator: “The solar light does not produce any smoke, so that is good for us inside our home, and I don’t have to spend money on paraffin for a lamp.
“There were incidents of houses going on fire and children being burned.”
Christine hopes that the light, which lasts six years and is provided by Trocaire, will enable her one year old child, Okello Francis, to read safely when he is attending school.
She said her sister died from AIDS – which is still very endemic in Uganda.
Sean Farrell of Trocaire, who regularly visits the people he helps in Uganda to see what need’s they have, said they hope to provide these solar lights to more camps, as well as goats, seeds and assistance in getting their original homeland back.
He told a large group of malnourished and poverty stricken, yet hugely hospitable and friendly people from the Kineni camp: “Trocaire are here for the long term.
“I’ve been to many villages. The demands are many and we will do what we can. And we keep our promises.”
Odokonyera Jackson (28) from Lagwai explained how a goat he got from Trocaire will enable him to give at least one of his eight children an education.
“The goat can deliver young who I can sell and get money for things like education and medical care.”
Jackson has four of his own children, but he also cares for the four children of his sister who died from AIDS and whose father was killed by the LRA.
In Uganda a child is orphaned when at least one of the parents dies, and usually the aunt or uncle will care for the children.
Jackson said he wants to go home, but he still fears a return of the LRA and there have been reports of rogue armed groups roaming the area.
Widow Akongo Naekolina (43), who is HIV positive and who is a mother of seven is one of the people who has returned to her homestead.
She said she is happy to be back, but because of her health and the death of her husband, who was a Ugandan army soldier, she must rent out some of her land to afford food and other needs.
The clearance of land mines also remains an issue in the Padar region.
Dad of one Okemy Bosco (22) said at his home in the Kineni return site, where 2,200 people live, that until three mine fields are cleared he will never return home.
“Hopefully we can go home, but there are three mapped areas of unexploded mines in that area,” he said.
In the same camp an elder, Otting Santina (65), said it is difficult for her to return to her homestead and provide for herself because of her age and the frail condition of her 80 year old husband.
She was once beaten by the LRA who forced her at gunpoint to fetch them water during a raid and killed five of her close relatives.
She remembered a time when every village was happy with plenty of crops and animals.
Santina said: “I’m not certain for the future of the country. For the youth, if war ends then it will be good, but not otherwise.”
Michael Caritan of Caritas thanked Irish people for helping them provide simple needs like solar lights, goats and seeds to the impoverished people living in camps.
He said: “We are very grateful for what the community on Ireland have done for the people in Pader.
“It is our appeal that more support should be given to continue to support these people.”
Butchered children with missing organs are being found on a daily basis in north Uganda - in what is believed to be a recent increase in human sacrifices by a minority of witchcraft followers.
There are even reports of young girls being buried alive beneath newly built buildings - which is believed to give the new structures some sort of luck in the minds of depraved witch-doctors.
There are also fears that organs from these children are being sold to wealthy individuals in eastern and western countries.
A group funded by the Irish charity Trocaire, Facilitation for Peace and Development (FAPAD), is leading the campaign for police and government action on this sick killing spree in and around a large rural town called Lira in the Lango region.
The brutal attacks have escalated since the start of the year with one dead child being dumped almost every day.
Eunice Apio of FAPAD – which is funded by Trocaire in Uganda – said: “Children are being snatched, stolen, and abducted almost every day and reappear either headless or without internal body organs.”
Eunice is supported by the local media in Lira - which is hugely influential and often hear of crimes and events before the police.
She is appealing for the Ugandan government to set up road blocks to check bikes and cars for children – and wants witchcraft, which has a secretive minority following, to be banned.
“Witch doctors are partly to blame up here,” she said.
Eunice said that there have been many attempted child abductions stopped by quick thinking witnesses.
She said that in one incident a car full of men who looked of Asian decent had grabbed a young boy, until they were seen by a local man who chased them until they let the boy go.
I spoke to the shocked father of one three year old boy, who he found with no left arm and with her chest ripped open showing that the heart, liver and pancreas was removed.
School teacher for the disabled, Peter Odongo, who lives in Lira with his wife Aceng (28) and children, was in a sub county called Loro in the Oyan district for a week visiting relatives when little Okello Chrispus went missing on December 15 last.
He said: “He disappeared and could not be found, but five days later on December 20 he was found dead in the bush in the county.
“I was the second person on the scene.
“The child was slaughtered – cut from the chest and his organs removed, maybe to be used by witchdoctors – but others suspect organs were sold.
“His left arm was also removed, maybe to prove that the organs came from him.”
The police were called and a post mortem was carried out the following day proving that organs were removed, possibly for rituals.
The visibly shocked father said he does not know if he can go back to teach.
He looked to be still in shock and appeared confused, angry and lost about what to do, but yet was able to tell his story clearly.
He said he hopes that by telling the rest of the world about what is happening some pressure can be put on the Ugandan authorities to find and lock up these child killers, who would be condemned to death if found and convicted.
He said: “My child was very intelligent at 3 years. He would scribble a,b,c and 1 and 2 and 3.
“We heard of this happening sometimes in Kampala [the Ugandan capital] but not here until now.”
He does not yet know if there was a witness to the slaughter of his child, but he said that a suspect was quickly identified and arrested by police and detained while he awaits charges, though without evidence it’s likely he will be released.
Peter is hoping that the Ugandan police – many of whom are well known for taking bribes – will properly investigate the murder.
Peter came to the FAPAD centre in Lira, which is helping him get assistance from the authorities and anything else he needs.
He said he has told his remaining three children, aged eight months to eight, not to go out - fearing they will suffer the same horror.
Assistant Inspector of Ugandan Police in Lira, Apio Christine, who is also the child protection officer, told me there have been recent horrendous child atrocities, related to either witchcraft or the sale of organs, or possibly both.
She arrived to the FAPAF building at the request of Eunice to explain to me what they are doing about the recent child deaths.
She was given a cold bottle of coca cola - which is a luxury in this part of Uganda where there is little or no electricty and few food and drink supplies - and sat on an old couch in an empty office for the brief interview.
She said: “Children are being found a lot now with parts of their bodies missing.”
Insp Christine said they are investigating each case with the resources they have – which are so bad that they need help from groups like FAPAD to bring victims to them in Lira town to save police the expense of petrol.
She said a man was jailed for life last year after he burned his child alive in a home in what was believed to have been a human sacrifice.
FAPAD said that witch doctors, who can actually apply for a license to operate, may be hired by wealthy people who want to bless new buildings with the organs or blood being buried in them.
There is even a report that a young girl was buried alive in a hole left in the floor of a brand new building for a sort of sacrificial opening ceremony to give it luck, but police refused to dig up the building.
FAPAD said there have also been many attempted abductions.
They say that these are “atrocities” reminiscent of the massacres of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
“People are scared and angry. Something had better be done and quick,” said Eunice Apio.
Local journalist on Unity FM, Kim Luegulu, - who is very well known and influential in Lira – said: “Every day we get a report of a child being found dead with organs removed.
“And the story of the three year old being found by her father with an arm and organs removed is one of the most horrific.
“People have seen attempted abductions from motorbikes, and there is even a song out here about it called “Stop Child Sacrifice.”
Kim said witchcraft is practiced by a tiny minority of people who they believe might be very wealthy – paying others to kidnap the children.
He said there have already been cases of suspects beaten by mobs.
“What’s needed here is mobilisation. We are trying to engage our local leaders,” he said.
Large demonstrations on this new and increasingly worrying issue in Uganda have been held in recent weeks.
Trocaire’s Programme Officer for Uganda Sean Farrell, said they will help by continuing their funding of FAPAD and keeping in close contact with them regarding their needs.
He said: “Following the decades of war, where children were abducted, used as child soldiers and totally abused, it’s terrible to think that at this point when the war is over that children are still facing such awful and despicable denials of their rights.”
Posts
