O famigerado Exército de Resistência do Senhor

By George Fominyen

DAKAR (AlertNet) – Inhabitants of Congo’s Province Orientale, bordering Republic of South Sudan, are increasingly preyed on by armed groups, particularly the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a report from international aid group Oxfam said on Thursday.
Despite military operations by the Congolese and Ugandan armies to snuff out the LRA, 90 percent of the 3.3 million people in the Haut and Bas Uele territories of eastern Congo still live in fear of attack, according to Oxfam's annual survey. Small groups of “hungry fighters” from the LRA wreak havoc on civilians and are responsible for widespread killings, lootings and abductions.
The charity said in a statement that June was one of the worst months on record for LRA violence in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There were 53 attacks, involving 26 deaths and 23 kidnappings, including 10 children.
Attacks in the first six months of 2011 totalled 158, representing a 53 per cent increase on the previous year. Some 45,000 civilians fled the LRA in the same period.
“Our future is dark,” said an unnamed respondent in the Haut Uele region. “We are scared all the time. The LRA continue to kill us and burn our houses down.”
Since September 2008, the LRA - which was chased out of Uganda, and is famous for mutilating its victims and abducting children to work as porters and sex slaves - has killed more than 2,300 people, abducted over 3,000 and displaced more than 400,000 others in DRC, Sudan and Central African Republic.
Its fighters are particularly dreaded by locals because they loot crops and destroy farms, leaving impoverished people even poorer and hungrier.

CALL FOR MORE UN PROTECTION

Oxfam has called for more troops from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo (MONUSCO) to be deployed in regions where the LRA is active.
MONUSCO is the largest U.N. peacekeeping force in the world, with more than 18,000 troops across the country. Yet fewer than 1,000 peacekeepers are estimated to be deployed in LRA-affected areas.