SUMMARY
Uganda's post-independence history has been characterized by violence. The country has seen almost continuous warfare since 1978, with rebel groups in different parts of the country fighting successive regimes. A common denominator for many of the conflict phases has been political elites manipulating ethnic and regional differences in order to legitimate their claim to power.
When Yoweri Museveni seized government power in 1986, he put an end to several decades of quickly changing governments. However, Museveni was unable to fully project governmental power across the Ugandan territory and he was facing numerous insurgencies, of which many were ethnically motivated and fought by regional minority groups. Museveni had his support base among the Bantu-speaking population in Uganda's southern and south-western regions, which alienated him from the groups in the eastern and northern parts of the country whose representatives had dominated the previous government, which had been ousted by Museveni. The fact that a southerner had taken over as president was perceived with distrust in Uganda's north and east. Museveni’s NRA (National Resistance Army) was seen as an enemy particularly amongst the Acholi och Teso.
While security forces were fighting rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) and UPA (Uganda’s People’s Army) in the northern and eastern regions of Uganda in 1990 and 1991, government forces also targeted and killed civilians on several occasions. Most often, the killing of civilians was connected to anti-rebel operations. During these operations, not only was little attention paid to protecting civilian lives, but civilians belonging to the ethnic groups in Uganda’s north and east often became the direct target of violence committed by NRA troops.
In particular during 1990, many civilians were killed in the eastern region of Teso, where a rebellion had erupted in 1987 and the UPA had taken up arms, fighting the regime of President Museveni. In February, the NRA launched a major offensive against armed groups in Teso, and thousands of civilians were rounded up in camps. Moreover, civilians were killed under various circumstances, including extrajudicial executions, burning, and arbitrary killings on the streets.
One-sided violence continued along similar lines in 1991, but was more concentrated in the country’s northern region, mainly in and around Kitgum, where NRA troops targeted Joseph Kony’s LRA rebels. Violence escalated when NRA launched “Operation North” on 31 March and for the coming five months the northern districts of Apac, Lira, and Kitgum were completely sealed off with a media blackout imposed. The offensive in northern Uganda meant heavy setbacks for the rebels under Kony’s leadership. Both the government army (the NRA) and the rebels committed gross human rights abuses against civilians and one-sided violence escalated, claiming the lives of even more civilians than in the previous year. The person in charge of the operation, the Minister of State for Defence, Major General David Tinyefuza, became notorious as the NRA conducted killings, arbitrary arrests, and torture.
The Government of Uganda first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1990, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 deaths. The threshold was reached on 10 August that year, when 16 people were burned to death by Ugandan security forces.
