Ugandan Rebels Ask For Forgiveness After 20 Years Of War

November 7, 2007 10:04 a.m. EST

Kampala, Uganda (AHN) - Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels have offered an act of reconciliation and pleaded for forgiveness for waging a 20-year rebellion which the group now says was a mistake.

Martin Ojul, a representative of LRA sought the forgiveness of its war victims, particularly in the northern country. Over 1.5 million people still live in temporary shelter because of the two decades of conflict.

Ojul told a local radio station, "The LRA made plenty of mistakes and I ask for forgiveness for what happened to our people." The group asked the victims to forgive them for the atrocities they committed.

The LRA committed most of its brutal acts in the north including cutting off captives' hands, lips and ears. Tens of thousands died during the insurgency that drove an estimated 2 million people from their homes.

However, LRA leader Joseph Kony and three of his deputies were not part in the visit of the LRA representative. Kony and his three deputies were wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.

The archbishop of Gulu in the northern town where the LRA delegates were holding talks, described the plea of forgiveness as a way of healing the wounds of the war.

The LRA delegates told leaders in the region that their top commanders, who were facing war crime charges before the ICC, should be tried by traditional Ugandan justice.

"We are here for reconciliation and we want to come back and live with the people peacefully and in harmony," Ojul said.

The consultation process, led by Ojul, is expected to last up to six weeks to cover the whole northern Uganda.

But it will not be easy for the LRA to gain the trust of the public since the group earned a brutal reputation of mutilating their victims and kidnapping thousands of children to train as fighters, porters and sex slaves.

"Forgiveness is healing and it has a more lasting effect then revenge, the perpetuation of hatred, the perpetuation of war," Archbishop of Gulu John Odama adds.