Following the shooting of 41 shepherds in a punitive action of the army in Uganda the Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) demanded an independent investigation of the massacre by the United Nations. The victims belong to the Jie group, a tribe of the Karamojong. As we have just learned, the punitive action took place last Wednesday when the army was looking for the thieves following a theft of cattle in the Kaabon district.

"The brutal action of the Ugandan army is out of all proportion and cannot be justified in any way”, says the fax of the STP to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, in Geneva. "It is not the first time that the army has acted with excessive violence against Karamojong to combat cattle-theft. Since December 2009 at least 110 Karamojong shepherds have been killed in violent disarming actions and clashes with the Ugandan army.”

When between July 2003 and August 2006 more than 1,057 persons – among them 45 children and women – were killed in 474 cases of cattle-theft and the following punitive actions the soldiers behaved more cautiously in the following years following massive criticism from the United Nations, reported the STP Africa consultant, Ulrich Delius. However the situation escalated again at the end of 2009. Army helicopter were used to fire on the Karamojong and 22 died at the end of January 2010.

The Karamojong, who number about 900,000, live chiefly as semi-nomads in the dry region of Karamoja in the north-east of Uganda. Their herds of cattle, camels and goats are considered to be the largest in the country. As a result of the climate-change the region is constantly faced with long-lasting droughts and the following torrential rainfall, which render all farming very difficult. So most of the Karamojong still live from their herds of cattle. Cattle-theft is a tradition among the ethnic groups in the region. This is accentuated by the climate-change since the Karamojong have to compete with the Pokot and other tribes for access to water-holes and pasture-land.

The conflicts have been aggravated by thousands of small-calibre weapons existing in the region. The Ugandan army maintains that they have confiscated 27,000 weapons since 2001. However many disarmament campaigns caused the violence to escalate since infringements of human rights were committed. On top of this soldiers have been selling weapons illegally to the Karamojong to improve their pay.

Ulrich Delius will be glad to provide further information at asien@gfbv.de.