KAMPALA, Uganda: Indicted for killing thousands and kidnapping children to become soldiers and sex slaves, Joseph Kony has been Africa’s most notorious warlord for three decades. Now that the US and others are ending the international manhunt for him and his Lord’s Resistance Army, it appears Kony may never be brought to justice.
His elusiveness in the often lawless bush of central Africa is legendary. In one incident, Ugandan military forces in hot pursuit raided Kony’s hideout deep in a Congo wildlife park in 2008 and seized little but a wig and guitar he left behind.
Despite the millions of dollars spent to catch him, Kony has outlasted his hunters. That’s a blow to victims who hoped he would stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) where he has been charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“The yearning for justice is there,” said Judith Akello, a lawmaker who represents a community in northern Uganda once hit by Kony’s rebel insurgency. “Justice is what the people demand.”
Kony became internationally notorious in 2012 when the US-based advocacy group Invisible Children made a viral video highlighting the LRA’s alleged crimes. The group is accused of killing over 100,000 people, according to the UN.
The US has offered up to $5 million for information leading to Kony’s capture.
Although scores of LRA fighters have recently surrendered or been killed, the whereabouts of Kony, now in his 50s, remain a mystery. Recent defectors from the rebel group suggest he is sick and hiding somewhere in the vast, ungoverned spaces of central Africa.
In pulling out of the military mission against the LRA, the US in March said the rebel group’s active membership is now less than 100. The US first sent about 100 special forces as military advisers to the mission in 2011, and in 2014 sent 150 Air Force personnel.
Echoing the US, Uganda’s military last month announced it was ending the manhunt and pulling out 1,500 troops because “the mission to neutralize the LRA has now been successfully achieved.”
The military withdrawal means Kony may never be caught, said some observers. Of the five LRA commanders indicted by the ICC in 2005, he is the only one still at large. One commander, Dominic Ongwen, is currently on trial at the ICC following his arrest in Central African Republic in 2015.
“Kony is the ultimate master of survival in the jungle,” said Kasper Agger, an independent researcher in Central African Republic who monitors LRA activities. “He has survived three decades of warfare and evaded capture from the most powerful and expensive military in the world.”
Kony’s rebels may continue as a “group of bandits” in sparsely populated areas of Congo and Central African Republic, where they may link up with other armed groups, said Agger. LRA rebels trade in wildlife products to support their activities, slaughtering elephants for ivory in Congo under Kony’s direct orders, according to The Enough Project.
The LRA remains a regional threat, a new UN report on sexual violence in conflict says. “The Lord’s Resistance Army continued its decade-old pattern of abduction, rape, forced marriage, forced impregnation and sexual slavery” in Central African Republic and has a presence in Congo and South Sudan, it says.
Kony has proved difficult to capture “mainly because he hides in Sudan-controlled territory” in which other African forces are not permitted to operate, said Sasha Lezhnev of the Enough Project. Sudan has denied allegations by Uganda’s government that it actively supports the LRA.
A former Catholic altar boy whose rebel movement started as a tribal uprising with aspirations of ruling Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments, Kony is an almost mythical figure. LRA fighters have said he has paranormal powers to read the minds of disloyal commanders.
Under military pressure, the LRA fled Uganda in 2005, moving first to Congo and then to parts of Central African Republic in a vast jungle area about the size of France. By then vastly degraded, the LRA splintered into small groups that were constantly on the move.
The rebels were up against a poorly organized Ugandan military, whose commanders in the anti-Kony campaign were accused of creating phantom soldiers on the payroll and abusing civilians.
“Kony and LRA’s nine lives were the result of their discipline,” said Angelo Izama, an analyst in Uganda who runs a think tank on regional security called Fanaka Kwawote.
Although Kony could appear bizarre, “he presided over a formidable, well-armed and loyal outfit that was quite capable of running rings around the supposedly superior soldiers sent to hunt him down,” said Matthew Green, author of “Wizard of the Nile,” a 2008 book about the LRA.
“While many people in (northern Uganda) reviled Kony for the atrocities he ordered, they were also subject to repression and abuses by (Ugandan) President Museveni’s security forces,” Green said. “Kony survived in part because there was often a deep-seated ambiguity in attitudes toward his movement among his own people, even though they were his principal victims.”
As manhunt ends, top African warlord Kony eludes justice
As manhunt ends, top African warlord Kony eludes justice
Hong Kong election turnout in focus amid anger over deadly fire
- Security tight as city holds legislative elections
- Residents angry over blaze that killed at least 159
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s citizens were voting on Sunday in an election where the focus is on turnout, with residents grieving and traumatized after the city’s worst fire in nearly 80 years and the authorities scrambling to avoid a broader public backlash.
Security was tight in the northern district of Tai Po, close to the border with mainland China, where the fire engulfed seven towers. The city is holding elections for the Legislative Council, in which only candidates vetted as “patriots” by the China-backed Hong Kong government may run.
Residents are angry over the blaze that killed at least 159 people and took nearly two days to extinguish after it broke out on November 26. The authorities say substandard building materials used in renovating a high-rise housing estate were responsible for fueling the fire.
Eager to contain the public dismay, authorities have launched criminal and corruption investigations into the blaze, and roughly 100 police patrolled the area around Wang Fuk Court, the site of the fire, early on Sunday.
A resident in his late 70s named Cheng, who lives near the charred buildings, said he would not vote.
“I’m very upset by the great fire,” he said during a morning walk. “This is a result of a flawed government ... There is not a healthy system now and I won’t vote to support those pro-establishment politicians who failed us.”
Cheng declined to give his full name, saying he feared authorities would target those who criticize the government.
At a memorial site near the burned-out residential development, a sign said authorities plan to clear the area after the election concludes close to midnight, suggesting government anxiety over public anger.
Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong has said it would crack down on any “anti-China” protest in the wake of the fire and warned against using the disaster to “disrupt Hong Kong.”
China’s national security office in Hong Kong warned senior editors with a number of foreign media outlets at a meeting in the city on Saturday not to spread “false information” or “smear” government efforts to deal with the fire.
The blaze is a major test of Beijing’s grip on the former British colony, which it has transformed under a national security law after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.
An election overhaul in 2021 also mandated that only pro-Beijing “patriots” could run for the global financial hub’s 90-seat legislature and, analysts say, further reduced the space for meaningful democratic participation.
Publicly inciting a vote boycott was criminalized as part of the sweeping changes that effectively squeezed out pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong. Pro-democracy voters, who traditionally made up about 60 percent of Hong Kong’s electorate, have since shunned elections.
The number of registered voters for Sunday’s polls — 4.13 million — has dropped for the fourth consecutive year since 2021, when a peak of 4.47 million people were registered.
Seven people had been arrested as of Thursday for inciting others not to vote, the city’s anti-corruption body said.
Hong Kong and Chinese officials have stepped up calls for people to vote.
“We absolutely need all voters to come out and vote today, because every vote represents our push for reform, our protection of the victims of disaster, and a representation of our will to unite and move forward together,” Hong Kong leader John Lee said after casting his vote.
Hong Kong’s national security office urged residents on Thursday to “actively participate in voting,” saying it was critical in supporting reconstruction efforts by the government after the fire.
“Every voter is a stakeholder in the homeland of Hong Kong,” the office said in a statement. “If you truly love Hong Kong, you will vote sincerely.”
The last Legislative Council elections in 2021 recorded the lowest voter turnout — 30.2 percent — since Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.
