Dominic Ongwen, war criminal or enslaved for war? (op-ed)

Recently, Dominic Ongwen, commander in Joseph Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, was charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) with war crimes.

Ongwen pled not guilty.

Ongwen told the court he didn’t understand the charges. He said, “The charges are against the LRA. The LRA is Joseph Kony, the leader. But I am not the LRA.”

So who is Joseph Kony?

In 1986 rebel leader Yoweri Museveni overthrew government. Once in control Museveni’s forces sought revenge on ethnic groups that didn’t support their military campaign. Joseph Kony formed the LRA, but the LRA wasn’t just an anti-Museveni group. Their mission was to seize control of the country and govern it under biblical commandments and tribal tradition.

Kony was considered a prophet.

Kony and the LRA launched their insurgency in 1987, but Kony didn’t target government installations, he targeted the civilians he wanted to govern. Kony raided villages for supplies and forced children to carry the goods into the bush.

In 1991, President Museveni announced a massive military campaign to seek and destroy the LRA but it failed. Over the years the LRA grew and increased its methods of brutality. Any civilian that was suspected of supporting Museveni’s government or forming a self-defense force had their ears, lips, and noses cut off.

According to the United Nations, the LRA killed more than 100,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million civilians in four African countries from 1987-2012.

In a 2002 public radio address Joseph Kony admitted to abducting children.

Kony said, “That’s the way we recruit, the same way Museveni was doing it.” The LRA has abducted between 60,000 to 100,000 children. The girls are sex slaves, but the boys were drugged and trained to become killers. One account explained how boys were forced to bite and beat friends and family members to death, and sometimes drink their blood. These sadistic initiations are done so the boys can never be reintegrated back into society.

Dominic Ongwen was one of those children.

The LRA kidnapped Ongwen while he was on his way to school. He was ten years old. He’s now in his early forties. He’s the first former child soldier to be charged by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ongwen committed every act. He even committed atrocities too gruesome to mention.

But the crucial question for the court is whether Ongwen is a perpetrator of war crimes or is he the victim of the Lord’s Resistance Army.

A woman ICC prosecutor called Ongwen a murder and a rapist. The prosecutor explained that the girls were held for years in domestic slavery and subjected to repeated rape. The defendant benefited the most from their misery. The prosecutor feels, “Ongwen’s own experience is not a justification to victimize others.” His own experience cannot begin to amount to a defense or a reason not to charge him for the choice that he made.

There seems to be some gender bias here.

The prosecutor appears solely disturbed by what happened to the abducted girls. She called their circumstances domestic slavery, but it must be pointed out that the ICC has charged Ongwen with “conscription of children under fifteen.”

The language used by the prosecutor and the court suggests that when the LRA abducted children the girls are considered enslaved, but the boys are viewed as drafted into an army.

If that’s the case, it’s easy to understand the prosecutor’s comments because, as an adult, a soldier has a duty to disobey an immoral order. That’s why she rejects the child soldier defense concerning rape. But what if the language was changed and he was viewed as a child enslaved for war? Would the prosecutor have the same sympathy for him that she shows for the girls? That won’t change Ongwen’s guilt, but it could change how these matters are adjudicated in the future.

It’s said the LRA forces these boys to do things so they can’t return to society. But it’s never said they’re forced to do these things because society won’t accept them back.

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 12/21/16