Norman Okot was having breakfast when a group of 22 armed men asked him to step out.
“If I refused, they would have killed me,” the Ugandan native says of the day he was kidnapped by the Lord’s Resistance Army more than 20 years ago.
After two weeks he was let go. He doesn’t know why. Many others haven’t been so fortunate, he says.
PDF: Move flyer IF YOU GO* What: Move for Uganda 5K race, walkathon and village walk-through* When: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday* Where: Coolidge Park* Information: www.moveforuganda.com or call 423-413-1958ON THE WEB*www.invisiblechildren.comABOUT THE WAR IN UGANDA*The conflict in northern Uganda to depose President Yoweri Museveni began immediately after he took power by force in 1986.*Abuses by the Lord’s Resistance Army include willful killings, beatings, large-scale abductions, forced recruitment of adults and children, rape and sexual slavery and large-scale looting and destruction of civilian property.* Government abuses include extrajudicial executions, rape, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary detention and forced displacement.*It is estimated that more than 90 percent of the LRA’s troops are children.Source: Human Rights Watch, Invisible Children
Mr. Okot, now 71, is one of the guest speakers at the third annual Move for Uganda, a fundraiser and awareness event on Sunday in Coolidge Park organized by local college and university students.
“We are raising the call to people all across Chattanooga: Take action for the unseen children of Uganda, move for those who cannot move themselves,” Adam Litchfield, founder of Move for Uganda and a senior business major at Southern Adventist University, wrote in an e-mail.
“There have been over 30,000 children abducted in this (24-year-old) war, the longest-running war in Africa’s history,” Mr. Litchfield said.
“They have been forced to fight as child soldiers, some as young as 6 or 7. Their futures are robbed, their country has been ravaged, and their schools have been torn down,” he said.
Since the war between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government started in 1986 people have had no lives at all, Mr. Okot said.
“They abducted and killed many people and completely affected the livelihood of people. People left their land and (were) packed into camps so they were living from handouts from the United Nations,” he said.
In the past two years Move for Uganda has raised more than $15,000 to rebuild war-torn schools in Uganda through Invisible Children, a nonprofit organization working to bring an end to child soldiering and to empower people through education.
Laura Kigweba, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student involved in the event, said she would like for people to leave Sunday with a better understanding of the war.
She would like attendees “to be aware of what happens outside of America and be aware of what they can do to stop these tragedies and the chaos,” the 20-year-old international studies major said.