It takes a tough stomach to look at the pictures of the unspeakable atrocities committed by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They are horrific beyond the pale: A foot sliced off from the shinbone. A gang of armed combatants with maniacal grins posing with a heap of severed heads in the foreground.
Another group in a similar photo-op displaying its grisly trophy of a lopped-off arm and two heads. The corpse of a girl sprawled on her back, naked except for an undersized T-shirt, with her head lying in a pool of her own blood. Was she, perhaps, the victim of a sexual assault before she was tortured to death? Then, more corpses, many of them headless, all tied up kandoya-style (or akangi na kamba as the Congolese would have it) on poles like game ready for carrying home.
According to Congo Vision, an online newspaper, those and other gut-wrenching images tell the story of the massacres that happened in the sector under the control of the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces.
You would think that with such gruesome evidence of the handiwork of the forces they helped unleash in Congo, Ugandan government officials would be chastened or restrained in their reaction to the news of the International Court of Justice's ruling in favour of reparations for the carnage and looting that happened under our noses, if not with our connivance.
Utterly shameless
But to a man, the shameless weasels are downplaying the gravity of the crimes committed in our name and the seriousness of the ICJ ruling. For the second week, they are publicly discussing in remorseless, tasteless, and cold-blooded words how we can talk our way out of retribution.
A recent article on the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Web site several times quotes Nsaba Buturo, who has distinguished himself as head of the National Resistance Movement's ruthless pack of propaganda hounds. Below are his words. The only editing I have done is to strip off indirect speech and consolidate the quotes under a single paragraph.
"We went there to defend our national interest. We still feel very strongly we were right and justified to do so. It is Uganda which has been invaded before. We know what invasion means. Our people [were] killed, our property destroyed. Clearly we feel strongly that there was a very compelling case that led us to do what we did.
Unfortunately, the court doesn't have the experiences we have had. Uganda is not the only country around the world that has done this thing before. It is a standard practice when it comes to defending the interests of one's country."
Buturo could not resist throwing in the gratuitous example of the United States and Britain invading Iraq to safeguard their interests.
Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Julius Onen also does his bit blabbering in The EastAfrican about neighbourliness and how he expects the issue to be settled without Uganda paying a penny.
"The pronouncement by the court is purely a declaration and the essence of implementation is a negotiation process. I am sure we shall find a lot of common grounds with Congo, especially since we are neighbours," Onen told The EastAfrican.
Congolese officials must be snorting contemptuously at such nonchalance. First of all, we wouldn't be in the unenviable position of being judged guilty by the ICJ of plundering Congo and turning its contiguous provinces into killing fields if our soldiers had merely paid a neighbourly visit to that country.
And for Chrissake, when we speak of the Congo conflict, we should never forget that at stake is more than wealth earned from illicit coltan, diamonds, gold, and timber and salted away in undisclosed European and North American bank accounts. Over 4.7 million people are estimated to have died as a result of the invasion.
Which means that in savagery and death toll, the Ugandan-induced tragedy of modern-day Congo is only outstripped by the holocaust of up to 10 million victims that the same country endured in the 19th Century when the cruel and greedy Catholic King Leopold of Belgium turned it into his fiefdom and slave labour camp.
Power and greed
As I mentioned in this space last week, there is a direct link between the NRM/A's arbitrary exercise of power in Uganda and the extreme avarice and violence of our army in Congo.
In the minds of the stoic architects of the NRM revolution, the deaths in Luwero, Internally Displaced Camps in northern Uganda, eastern Congo, and even Rwanda during the genocide are an acceptable price to pay for the changes they envision in our neighbourhood.
If that sounds like overstating the case, try recalling a single statement of regret from anybody who matters in government for the frightening scale of loss of life during any of the internal and external conflicts the NRM/A has been involved with since 1980.
Correction: Contrary to what I said in the intro of my last column, Kampala and Kinshasa are yet to negotiate the sum of reparations following the ICJ's ruling in Congo's favour.
Contact: jicho3wazi@yahoo.com
Sunday Monitor
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