The Implications of the Memo Attributed to President Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda
by Todd David Whitmore
Editor’s Note (December 22, 2010): Dr. Todd Whitmore of the University of Notre Dame published his peer-reviewed article “‘If They Kill Us, At Least Others Will Have More Time to Get Away’: The Ethics of Risk in Ethnographic Practice” in our most recent issue (issue 3, spring 2010). In that article, Dr. Whitmore develops a theological framing of ethnography as both a research method and an ethical practice. Since the publication of “If They Kill Us,” Dr. Whitmore has been in conversation with Practical Matters about the publication of documents, dating from the 1980s, that he received while doing research in Northern Uganda (available at musevenimemo.org).
These documents attribute to the sitting President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, the intent to commit acts of genocide against the Acholi people, an ethnic group situated in Northern Uganda, as early as the 1980s.
Over the summer of 2010, Practical Matters undertook an academic review process, which included experts in Ugandan history and politics, to evaluate both the authenticity of these documents and the ethical implications of publishing them. While the reviewers generally supported the journal in a decision to publish the documents, Practical Matters decided that it is not the most appropriate medium in which to make these documents available.Practical Matters, the journal’s editors and advisors concluded, cannot adequately contribute to securing the safety of persons in Uganda who might face retaliation as a result of the publication of these documents.
The journal did, however, decide to publish Whitmore’s analysis of these documents, which is available here. In this piece, Whitmore examines the historical and political situation in Northern Uganda that, he thinks, renders the documents’ purported provenance and authenticity likely. He also explores the ethical implications of publishing them in an online format. The editors and advisors ofPractical Matters feel that it is important to provide Whitmore a public context in which to practice the ethic he prescribes in “If They Kill Us.”
-------------------------------------------------
MUSEVENIMEMO.ORG
-------------------------------------------------------------
Preface to the Memo Attributed to Yoweri K. Museveni, President of Uganda
December 22, 2010
Although I travel to Uganda to study traditional Acholi culture and its interaction with Christianity (I am a theologian by training), on multiple occasions people have approached me to tell me about atrocities committed by the forces of the National Resistance Army (NRA, later to become the Uganda Peoples Defense Forces or UPDF) against the people of northern Uganda both before and during the armed conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army. Some of these people have passed documentation on to me.
On a recent trip of mine, one such person gave me the documents included on this website. One document is a memo, done on a typewriter, dated November 14, 1986, from someone codenamed “Tremor 1” to someone codenamed “Meteor Plus One.” The person who gave me the document – I will call her Ageno Komakec – told me that it is an internal memo, never meant to be circulated, from Yoweri Museveni, the current President of Uganda, to his brother Salim Saleh. The memo is signed “YKM.”
The memo, titled, “Subject: RETHINK” describes an aerial flyover of northern Uganda by Tremor 1, and his subsequent change of mind on policy towards the North. Previously, Tremor 1 thought that the victorious National Resistance Movement (NRM) should forget about the “backwards northerners,” particularly “the Chimpanzees called Acholis,” due to the lack of developmental prospects in the North. However, the flyover changed Tremor 1’s mind. There is a “Gold Mine” of fertile land in the North. Therefore, it is best that the NRM take it over. Such control, says Tremor 1, will require finding ways to “drastically reduce the population” and to “eliminate some old politicians who are likely to give us troubles.” Given the substantive content of the memo, it seemed to me to be important, even obligatory, to make it public and to pass it on to the relevant authorities. Now there can be an appropriate debate regarding its possible authenticity and, if it is authentic, its implications. I include my own analysis in an article in the journal, Practical Matters. It is an online journal, open to all, so that anyone can access it. The web address of the article is:
http://www.practicalmattersjournal.org/issue/3/analyzing-matters/genocide-or-just-another-casualty-of-war.
Readers who wish to send me their comments on either the documents or my article can do so to musevenimemo@gmail.com. I have sent a copy of the memo, which appears below, together with the real name of the person who gave it to me to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, and the International Criminal Court. These persons and organizations will be watching over the person who gave me the memo so that, in the event that the Ugandan government somehow finds out who she is, the government will know that it, too, is being watched.
