Barbara Among
29 March 2008
Kampala — More than 150 people have been abducted in the Central African Republic (CAR), in raids that officials have blamed on the Lord's Resistance Army rebels.
A report by the CAR parliament on Friday said most of those abducted were women and girls, and they had been abused.
"The style they used is the style of the LRA," the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) quoted Mboli Nani, MP for Obo in southeastern CAR, as saying. "They attack in the night slowly and quietly - they take people and they steal goods."
A United Nations (UN) report released in Geneva also confirmed that 150 people have been abducted in southeastern CAR in recent days.
The Ugandan government and the LRA are due to sign a peace deal on April 5.
Commenting on the report, the deputy leader of the government delegation to the Juba talks, Henry Okello Oryem, said the LRA's activities in CAR or in the DRC were no longer an issue between the LRA and the government, but between the LRA and the governments of CAR and DRC.
The Government recently confirmed that Kony had moved to the CAR from his Garamba hideout, in eastern DRC. The LRA leaders have, however, refuted that.
Oryem said the LRA peace delegation early in the week gave an undertaking, in the presence of elders and leaders from northern Uganda, that Kony will be in Ri-Kwangba to sign the final peace deal.
Maj. Paddy Ankunda, the army spokesman, said: "If he does not appear, the world will see the LRA for what it is. The government has put all its energy into the peace process and it's ready to sign. We have said this before that Kony can only find chastity in the peace agreement and we are working on it and we expect that they will sign it," Ankunda said.
A team of UN investigators which visited the remote area in CAR could not confirm whether the armed group responsible for the abduction, was the LRA.
"We were unable to identify who the perpetrators were, partly because several armed groups with similar modus operandi are present in the area," said Elizabeth Byrs, of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva UN spokeswoman said.
The report said about 40 people have been released by the fighters, many of the women reporting they had been gang-raped.
"Over 50 adults remain in captivity and none of the 55 abducted children have been released," the report stated.
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