Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Kampala (Agenzia Fides)- Stefano was 16 when he was abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in an attack the minor seminary in the diocese of Gulu in northern Uganda on 11 May, 2003 (see Fides 12/5/2003 and 19/5/2003). Stefano was kidnapped with 40 other seminarians.
According to a report drafted by Eva-Maria Kolmann of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) , the rebel group wanted the seminarians to fight with the other soldiers in its ranks. Most of the seminarians were eventually killed and 12 are still missing.
Stefano told his story to representatives of Aid to the Church in Need ACN based in Königstein, Germany, who were recently in Uganda.
“For two months killing, raping and torture was part of daily life. The rebels wanted to teach the boys how to kill, especially because they were seminarians. Stefano saw some of his friends beaten and kicked to death in front of him; others he saw slaughtered with machetes when they stopped walking because they could go no further on the long marches. However in this misfortune Stefano was fortunate, he managed to escape before being forced to kill anyone ” says the ACN report sent to Fides.
The kidnapped seminarian describes the night of the attack: “the rebels, about twenty of them, appeared about twenty minutes after midnight. They surrounded the building and them some came straight to the dormitory for 16 year old students. They could not open the door and so one of them climbed in the window to open the door from the inside. One of the seminarians had turned out the lights to stop the rebels, but they carried torches ”.
The two soldiers sent by the government to protect the seminary had fled as soon as the rebels appeared. “we had been left without protection” Stefano recalls. Besides the seminarians, on a piece of land adjacent to the seminary about two thousand people, mainly women and children were sheltering, hoping in vain to escape LRA night attacks. One of the rebels killed a little boy of about 7 years old in front of the mother, Stefano remembers.
The rebels made the seminarians march for hours. “I saw things I never imagined I would see. A man cannot escape all this, but God works miracles. Prayer was my only hope. During the long marches I prayed the Rosary using my fingers because I had no beads ” Stefano recalls.
Two months after the abduction, government troops attacked the rebels. In the confusion and fighting Stefano managed to escape and after walking for many days not knowing where he was going, he was found by an army patrol.
His family had thought he was dead. “They had asked the priest to say a Mass for me”, Stefano remembers. Stefano's parents and brothers did not want him to return to the seminary, but he knew that the seminary was his place. Today Stefano is a priest.
Since 1988 LRA rebels have abducted more than 30,000 children and adolescents of both sexes. They use the boys as soldiers and the girls as sex slaves. The children are raped, drugged, forced to kill and torture, the slightest resistance is brutally punished; many are killed in cold blood.
Some who manage to escape are too frightened to return to the family, they are so ashamed of the atrocities they were made to commit. The rebels often force the boys to kill people in their own villages, even parents or brothers and sisters, hoping in this way to make it impossible for them to return.
The local Catholic Church give assistance to these children in various ways. For example Lira Diocesan Radio station has a special programme on which family members send loving messages to kidnapped children convincing them to come home. Messages are also sent by abducted children who have returned and want to tell their companions not to be afraid, and to come home. The rebels are against these initiatives for peace and they set fire to the radio station. But the aerial did not burn and, with the help of Aid to the Church in Need, Radio Wa (“our radio”) continues to broadcast its programmes helping to restore peace and reconciliation in Uganda. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 31/7/2010)
