For 25 years Skylight Pictures has been committed to producing artistic, challenging and socially relevant independent documentary films on issues of human rights and the quest for justice. Through the use of film and digital technologies, we seek to engage, educate and increase understanding of human rights amongst the public at large and policy makers, contributing to informed decisions on issues of social change and the public good.
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With support from the Sundance Documentary Film Program’s first round of Audience Engagement grants, we just launched the Quechua version of State of Fear in Peru. A tour of extraordinary public screenings took us through the Andean regions of Ayacucho and Apurimac, both of which suffered the brunt of the violence in Peru’s 20-year war with Shining Path. The Peruvian Truth & Reconciliation Commission (PTRC), whose work State of Fear is based on, found that 70% of the conflict’s more than 69,000 victims, mostly innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, were Quechua speakers – so we felt it was imperative to make a version of the film dubbed into Quechua, to make the findings of the PTRC available to the audience most affected by Peru’s war on terror in the first feature-length documentary ever translated into Quechua.
With support from the Sundance Documentary Film Program’s first round of Audience Engagement grants, we just launched the Quechua version of State of Fear in Peru. A tour of extraordinary public screenings took us through the Andean regions of Ayacucho and Apurimac, both of which suffered the brunt of the violence in Peru’s 20-year war with Shining Path. The Peruvian Truth & Reconciliation Commission (PTRC), whose work State of Fear is based on, found that 70% of the conflict’s more than 69,000 victims, mostly innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, were Quechua speakers – so we felt it was imperative to make a version of the film dubbed into Quechua, to make the findings of the PTRC available to the audience most affected by Peru’s war on terror in the first feature-length documentary ever translated into Quechua.
We call the launch EDMQ 2.0 (for Estado de Miedo Quechua, the Spanish title for State of Fear Quechua) because we created a multi-platform website for the project (http://www.edmquechua.com) designed as a hub to engage human rights activists, victims, educators and youth with the social networking power of Web 2.0, using Twitter text messaging technology, photo sharing, Google maps, blogfeeds, and videoclips from the field. We brought FLIP video cameras, simple devices that allow videoclips to be posted directly to the web, which we gave to key local activists and showed them how to upload the clips to the project site. The FLIP works as a great human rights communication tool, ideal for recording comments and reactions from audience members right after a screening, and then immediately sharing them on the website. Here is an example of one of the first posts, a shot of the hundreds of people that attended the screening in the central plaza of the village of Socos, where the film was projected onto a huge white sheet hanging from the balcony of the Mayor’s office (more clips can be seen on the project site, in Spanish and Quechua):
Reactions to the Quechua version have been passionate and audiences have enthusiastically embraced the film – the impact of seeing their story in their own language can’t be underestimated. One of the big surprises was the amount of young people that came to the screenings, university students that expressed a desire to use the film to spread knowledge about Peru’s tragic conflict, a conflict that most of them only experienced as children if at all. It really feels like the rebirth of State of Fear after its original 2005 release in English and Spanish, and surely is the most important version we’ve made, with the promise of a long life in the Quechua-speaking regions of Peru. In order to make sure that the EDMQ version has as wide a reach as possible, we are promoting the copyleft concept and encouraging people to make as many copies of the film as they need, and download the screening workshop guide from the project web hub. Human rights organization COMISEDH, our key collaborator in the Ayacucho area, told audience members that if they brought a blank DVD to their offices they would burn them a copy, and they’ve been going like hotcakes.
The initial screenings of EDMQ have stirred controversy, because for the first time Quechua-speaking audiences are able to absorb the groundbreaking conclusions of the PTRC, and human rights activists are planning to use the film for political organizing, especially around the campaign to create an official Register of Victims to claim reparations from the State. In its Final Report, released in August 2003, the PTRC concluded that the political parties, military, police, insurgent groups (Shining Path and MRTA) and oblivious bystanders of Lima high society all shared the blame for the human devastation, but that the State because it was supposed to protect and not massacre its citizens, bore a special responsibility to compensate the victims. This has engendered fierce and relentless opposition from the political parties and the military, accusing the PTRC of being pro-terrorist and unpatriotic, accusations that completely distort the conclusions and spirit of reconciliation that animate the Final Report. No doubt Peru’s current President, Alan García, and Vice-President, Admiral Luis Giampietri, both of whom are implicated in the prison massacre of El Frontón that occurred during García’s first administration (1985-1990), would like to see the Final Report disappear. But it’s not going away – the PTRC rewrote the narrative of Peru’s 20-year war on terror, and in Quechua it now has a direct connection to those whose lives were most afflicted by the violence. The regional government of Ayacucho, dominated by President Garcia’s APRA party, already canceled a screening that had been planned for the main plaza of the city. But COMISEDH and other human rights activists are undaunted – they are taking State of Fear to small communities throughout the region in an ongoing campaign for truth and justice.
With support from the Ford Foundation we assembled the team of Quechua translators for State of Fear, and produced a 2-DVD set (with Quechua & Spanish versions of the film, a short on the ongoing trial of Alberto Fujimori and other extras, and a workshop guide). We produced 200 copies to distribute to Peru’s Human Rights Coordinating Committee (Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos), which are being distributed to their 67 member organizations throughout Peru.
The Reckoning was just accepted to the BritDoc 08 Good Pitch”, a special pitching session in Oxford, England designed for social issue documentary projects, with a focus on outreach funding. The International Justice Central/Hub mapping prototype we developed at the BAVC Producer’s Institute will be a central part of our pitch, as will our network of outreach partners! This will provide a good opportunity to raise funds for the outreach campaign. The Good Pitch takes place July 23-25.
I’m immersed at the BAVC Producer’s Institute for New Media, a 10-day think tank where 9 teams of documentary producers, video editors and multimedia developers get together to create projects that seek to extend the reach of social issue documentaries in new media spaces. Our team will propose an outreach tool we’re calling International Justice Central, or IJ Central, that will be centered on a “live” interactive map we’re designing to be overlaid on Google map technology, and will include…
1. All the locations where the ICC is operating in the world, such as its open cases in Uganda, DRC, Sudan, Central African Republic, and places it is monitoring like Colombia and Afghanistan. Also the headquarters in The Hague and the UN Security Council. The user of the map will be able to click on any of these locations and get a pop-up with more information about the cases or situations, or details about the Court in The Hague and the UN Security Council ICC briefings, incorporating characters from The Reckoning appearing in HD video we’ve shot over the past 2 years.
2. The map will receive real time text messaging pop-ups from cellphone social networks based on Twitter software that we will foster with activists and human rights defenders we’ve met in locations like northern Uganda, DRC, and Colombia, where cellphones are the most ubiquitous communication technology. Text messages from members of these networks will appear on the map at their geographical locations, giving voice to concerns, thoughts and sometimes urgent messages of people on the ground in the situation countries. For an example of a map receiving real time cellphone text messages, go to: http://twittervision.com/
4. The map will show all the countries that have joined the ICC and those that haven’t. It will also locate the NGOs that are working to promote the international justice system.
5. By entering your zip code, the map will show a pop-up of your congressperson/senator and their position vis-a-vis the ICC, and link to an email form addressed to the congressperson/senator to advocate for US ratification of the ICC.
6. A separate layer of the map would show locations of all other international justice activities around the world, such as the ICTY, the ICTR, the SCSL, Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia, Inter-American Court, the Audiencia Nacional in Spain, the Fujimori trial, TRCs, and so forth, giving a comprehensive picture of the international justice movement.
In all the explorations of new media tools for outreach, let’s not overlook the role of radio and its enduring potential for interactive engagement with audiences, as we saw while filming for The Reckoning in Bunia in the Ituri region of eastern DRC. While there we met…
the dynamic Richard Pituwa, who runs Canal Revelation, a radio station that has become a crucial forum for talking about justice through “Interactive Radio for Justice”, a program he produces with the irrepressible human rights activist Wanda Hall. Bunia has no newspapers, and electricity is so sporadic that TV is not a strong medium, but radios run on batteries and are ubiquitous, so radio is far and away the dominant source of information in the region. People call in all day long on their cellphones, and we filmed a fascinating program they hosted with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo
If we succeed in engaging audiences, how do we move them from engagement to building a movement for international justice and exerting pressure on policy makers?
I attended a panel in San Francisco yesterday called Sourcing the Future: Marketing and Sustainability for Social Justice Media Onlinewhere we heard lots of ideas on how to increase the visibility of a documentary project, thinking of it more as content than programming, getting users to spread your work through social networks, the usual head-scratching about monetizing social issue work, and so forth, but I was left with this enduring question: how do we take someone who has become engaged with an issue and move them to political action? With some issues you can make individual changes in your lifestyle that can impact the larger picture, like the food you eat, the car you drive, etc. But other issues require collective action and political pressure. The Reckoning will raise public awareness about the ICC - from that point, how can we get the US to engage with the Court and ratify the Rome Statute? It’s going to require political pressure - if we succeed in engaging the public, we’ll have to go the next step and organize those engaged people to help us educate and press policy makers to support this important new Court. Beyond all the online tools we can bring to bear, we also need to bring people together offline. We should definitely offer screening kits to build on what AIUSA has been doing with the film we made for them, Justice Without Borders, so that people can get together around the issue and meet each other, and hopefully create nodes of engaged citizens around the country to get behind the ICC.
New tools are emerging for advocacy and social networking with text messages on mobile phones…
I just started a ten day total immersion seminar at the BAVC Producer’s Institute, a kind of high-tech think tank to develop ideas to move beyond established methods of distribution and look for ways to reach out and energize and grow our audiences through social networks, to visualize the issues through interactive mapping and gaming, and ultimately to get citizens to engage and act on the issues.
Because The Reckoning is a documentary about the global reach and effects of the International Criminal Court (ICC), I’m intrigued by the idea of making a live interactive earth map that not only shows you what the ICC is and where it operates by incorporating embedded video we’ve shot and text, but also receives news feeds and mobile phone text messages in real time. After 2 years of filming with amazing people in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Colombia, it’s clear that mobile phones would be the best way to keep hearing from them and share their insights into the struggle for justice and the defense of human rights. This was reinforced for me when I received a call at 3am, a few hours before the start of the BAVCPI, from Dennis Lemoyi, leader of the Pagak IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp in northern Uganda and a major character in our film - he was calling me on his mobile phone, of course, and had no idea where I was in the world or what time zone I was in - but my first thought was that his call augured well for our 10-day meet. And sure enough, by the end of the day, video compression guru Andy Beach showed us an amazing new online map, TwitterVision (http://twittervision.com/) that receives live text uplinks from members of Twitter mobile phone networks, showing their location on the map. So first day in, and one of my big questions was answered - how to maintain live contact with people on the ground in the situation countries. Apparently we’ll be able to adjust our map so that the Twitter feed is specific to the social network we create around international justice. So I can imagine a network made up of people like Dennis Lemoyi and other amazing voices from the field, sharing their thoughts and sending their text messages up to the map. Now we have to find a mobile phone maker or carrier to sponsor the SMS use for members of our network.
On July 17, 2008, we will be presenting 30 minutes of scenes from The Reckoning at the UN, during the celebration of the X Anniversary of the signing of the Rome Statute at Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium.
Greetings and thanks again to all of you who attended the outreach summit for The Reckoning on April 3, and for those of you who weren’t able to attend, we hope that you will join us now online. For instructions on how to access the forum, please click on the “read more” link.
Skylight Social Media and ICTJ Productions invite all of you to participate in this forum that we’ve set up in order to keep the conversation going about how to create a far-reaching and high-impact campaign around The Reckoning to increase public awareness and support for the ICC.
If you click on the discussion section or on any of the discussion tags to the left, you will be asked to register and log in, as this conversation won’t be open to the general public because we want to keep it manageable. Feel free to weigh in on any of the discussion topics – we welcome all constructive criticism and brilliant ideas! We hope that this online dialogue will help us all create a landmark outreach/engagement campaign and break new ground in the use of documentary film for effective advocacy.
If you have any questions about how to use the site please don’t hesitate to .
The footage sample at the top of this page includes scenes filmed in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, The Hague ICC headquarters, and the UN Security Council. This is the same sample we screened at the April 3 outreach summit, and we posted the footage in order to inform the forum discussions. It is important to remember when looking at this footage that we are in the early stages of editing and these scenes will not necessarily appear in the film as you see them here. Nevertheless, these are themes we’re exploring for The Reckoning and we welcome your feedback.
Most outreach & engagement campaigns built around a documentary film consist of screenings, workshops, Q&As and other activities related to the finished film that is released. I propose that we expand beyond that model by placing at the core of our campaign a Campaign Production Unit (CPU), which will be responsible for the preparation of materials and tools for the campaign, including ‘media modules’ and podcasts for distribution on the Internet, creation of an interactive online learning “game” about the ICC, and ongoing updates on the work of the ICC.
The CPU would also receive requests from advocates and educators for custom-made ‘media modules’ for specific needs, based on sample video clips and descriptions of our footage (making full use of all the “outs” that didn’t make it into the film), and transcripts made available on the website.
Our campaign will be a hybrid of traditional distribution methods (festivals, television) and extensive use of the Internet as well as grassroots organizing and new elements like a CPU for the benefit of advocates and educators. Any comments on this idea, and if it seems useful, would be appreciated.
These are discussion topics we recorded during the April 3 outreach summit. Please feel free to continue the discussion here on the site about any of these topics. To see the list of topics please click on “read more”.
Topics:
Costs: life, social, real others
Threat of the ICC to Western governments
Documenting evidence/individual crime
Context with what individuals can do
Couldn’t happen today (Rome Statute)
Consider graphic nature
Not equipped to do arrests
Gender, reparations
Complementarity principle
Universal jurisdiction - bigger picture
Real criminal court
Activities beyond the Prosecutor - give a sense of how it all comes together
Invite audience to judge these crimes
Info on costs of investigations and trials
Limited abilities
Educate public on concept of fair trial, what justice means
Practical tools - after seeing the film
Show context in which the ICC operates
Target mediators
How to reach out to the rest of the world
Show that ICC works in laces other than Africa - fair and equitable institution
Freeze frames at the end of the film with facts
“I believe in the ICC” as a viral campaign
Make sure images match words
ICC as character in the film come alive and show interaction with the ICC - personal stories
How does the ICC work? Misinformation about the ICC is a key obstacle.
Create spaces for reflection - text reaction and show onscreen
How can film change landscape? Lack of media coverage and knowledge of the Court.
Challenge - convince people that the human rights movement is best interest
What does success look like?
Give to the leaders, be hopeful, population is fertile ground put in schools, give to teachers
Know why the ICC is problematic - include counterpoints in curriculum
Match short version with other films - things can be done
Caution against “click here ad the world will be btter” - be a real, informed person
Cooperate with ICC, ratification, address concerns
Tool for civil society
Idea to plant in film that can run on its own
Cause and effect. Enough
Use religious institutions as sites for screenings
Important that kids understand complexity, process, country-specific, facilitate discussions with citizens, evangelicals
Fill vacuum
Tailor messaging to places where screening
Research issues for each context - ear to the ground
Show positive spillover effect nationally
Show ICC’s reach (potential) in Northern/Western countries
Enforcement
Value of the work the ICC is doing - justice/peace relationship
Make the ICC personal
Audience Humanitarian aid workers; need basic information; able to show films; journalists, medical groups
Think Big Vision
Target audiences - policymakers (EU, AU); who? Where? In countries: situation countries; countries where impunity/accountability are issues; communities most affected; civil society; policymakers in countries.
What will lawyers do? Build course/law students/build excitement. Law firms. Make info available - database.
Model UNs/Global classrooms/work with teachers
Get this to people advising Presidential candidates before the election
Religious organizations, evangelicals
More screenings
Dis-aggregation of content - shorter packages
Should widest possible audience debate?
Different pieces/shorter pieces/Topic level
Start with civilians? Reach widest range possible?
Hosted screenings online with discussions have text chats and on-going real-time conversations
Skylight Social Media is excited to be taking part in the Bay Area Video Coalition’s Producer Institute for New Media Technologies.
About the Institute:
The Producers Institute for New Media Technologies is a ten-day residency for eight creative teams (independent producers or public broadcasters) with a shared goal of developing and prototyping a multi-platform project inspired by, or based on a significant documentary project. The intention of the Institute is to develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms. Producers participate in high-level industry roundtables, intense one-on-one project development with technical mentors, new media storytelling workshops, and hands-on prototyping of their ideas. The participants adapt and develop film, video, and audio content for delivery using a range of interactive formats, including but not limited to video game applications, interactive, web-based experiences, mobile streaming, multi-user communities, and new educational software. Producers may propose a range of delivery strategies, including cell phones, other hand-held devices, set-tops, Internet, portable software and more. The Institute provides creative mentors, technology consultants and advisors based on the needs of your project. At the end of the ten-day residency, all participants demonstrate and pitch to a panel of VC funders, industry leaders, and foundations. As ongoing support after the Institute, BAVC hosts a web-based resource center for the continued sharing of new ideas, strategies, project development, and distribution opportunities.
We walked with Hema tribal spokesman Professor Pilo Kamaragi through the killing fields of Bogoro in the Ituri region of eastern Congo, site of the massacre allegedly perpetrated by local warlord Germain ‘Simba’ Katanga - human skeletons were strewn throughout the tall elephant grass. Katanga was charged by the International Criminal Court with 3 counts of crimes against humanity and 6 counts of war crimes for his involvement in killings, pillaging, using child soldiers, and sexual enslavement during an attack on the town of Bogoro.
From a documentary filmmaking point of view, we (our crew: Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís, Melle van Essen, Susan Meiselas, Leo Franssen, Lotsove Tryphonette and Pastor Marrion P’Udongo) had the serendipity of being in Ituri in October when Katanga, who led the FRPI militia, was taken into custody by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to The Hague, to the same prison where his arch-enemy Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Hema UPC militia, has been since last year facing charges of conscripting child soldiers, a war crime under the Rome Statute which governs the ICC. When speaking to members of each of these alleged warlords’ ethnic groups, the Hema for Lubanga and the Lendu for Katanga, they often tell you that their leaders were protectors, not perpetrators. Each group claims to have battled the other in self-defense against genocidal attacks. The tragic result is that tens of thousands of members of both ethnic groups were viciously massacred, raped, dismembered, and a whole generation of youth traumatized by their forced participation in the brutality of war. Until the ICC took Katanga, Lubanga’s Hema people complained that the ICC was being unjust in singling out their leader, but it turns out that he was just the first of several warlords the ICC has in its sights.
Now that Katanga is in custody as well, leaders of both groups are claiming that it’s their Ituri region that’s been targeted, so the conversation has shifted to a national perspective on justice. But they seem resigned to let justice take its course with Lubanga and Katanga, and are actually calling for the ICC to arrest “bigger fish” in Congo’s capital Kinshasa, and to intervene in the Lake Kivu region where so much unspeakable violence is raging.
Even though in recent years there has been less fighting in Ituri and its provincial capital Bunia, the region still bears deep scars of war: buildings in collapse, weapons plentiful, and a people living with a legacy of horror - we saw photos of heads on spikes, rows of heads and severed arms held aloft, displayed as trophies of war by smiling victors, taken as recently as 2003. Yet another replay of humankind’s capacity for unbounded cruelty. Our hotel in Bunia had a “No Weapons” sign on the gate,
and army deserters were assaulting travelers daily a few miles out of town.
We were also accompanied in our visit to Bogoro by one of its former residents, Professor Jean Vianney Tibasima Sahie , who took us to the ruins of the home he had to abandon when his family fled Katanga’s FRPI militia attack. The lush verdant growth of the high central African plateau had engulfed the property, and after pushing our way through shoulder-high grass for a hundred yards we came upon the remains of stately stone arches and hardwood balustrades, ringing an elegant semi-circle veranda overlooking Lake Albert in the far distance.
The specter of another time, conjuring serenity, prosperity and aspiration, a world brought down. It also highlighted the fragility and ephemeral quality of communities riven by underlying tribal tensions wound tight for so long, unresolved, and exacerbated by the colonial experience. Even as I write these lines Kenya has exploded along tribal fault lines due to a disputed presidential election. It was sad and sobering to stand in those evocative remains of a home, in the dignified and melancholy presence of Professor Jean.
It will take time to bring Ituri back to the prosperous agricultural and mining region it once was, and ending the culture of impunity is an essential element in the process - the ICC arrests have made clear that perpetrators will be brought to account, which is a major step towards a lasting peace.
The MONUC peacekeepers have played a stabilizing role by administering a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program which has helped bring thousands of rebel fighters (many of them child soldiers) back into their communities. After Katanga was taken to The Hague, the last 3 remaining warlords in the Ituri region turned themselves in to accept a DDR offer, apparently no longer seeing any future as rebels and wanting to avoid the ICC.
In the midst of all this catastrophe, we were inspired by local heroes we found working against formidable odds to strengthen justice in the Congo:
Major Innocent, a military judge who keeps a copy of the ICC Rome Statute on his desk to guide him as he judges Congolese military officers and soldiers for human rights abuses. We filmed a hearing at the military tribunal in Bunia, where the defendant had received a life sentence in absentia (he escaped during a previous trial but was later recaptured) for participating in the killing of UN peacekeepers in 2005, and was appealing his sentence. While we weren’t there for the final ruling, in our interview Major Innocent told us that he thinks it’s important to set an example by imposing harsh sentences for human rights violations, so it probably didn’t bode well for the defendant. Even though the defendant was an irregular militia and not in the Congolese army, civilians who commit crimes with military weapons in Congo can be tried under military law. We also met dynamic Richard Pituwa, who runs Canal Revelation, a radio station that has become a crucial forum for talking about justice through “Interactive Radio for Justice”,
a program he produces with the irrepressible human rights activist Wanda Hall. Bunia has no newspapers, and electricity is so sporadic that TV is not a strong medium, but radios run on batteries and are ubiquitous, so radio is far and away the dominant source of information in the region. People call in all day long on their cellphones, and we filmed a fascinating program they hosted with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo phoning in from The Hague to take questions about the Katanga arrest from local callers. Justice on the ground and on the air.
After spending October filming in Ituri surrounded by the wreckage of war, we headed for Uganda in a small UN plane, bucking like a bronco through massive thunderclouds towering over the Great Lakes of Africa.
On the same day, Patrick Opiyo Makasi, a Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Director of Operations, arrived in Uganda after escaping from the LRA redoubt in Congo’s Garamba National Park. It took some doing, but we managed to interview him and got a first-hand account of mounting tensions within the LRA due to the arrest warrants issued for their 5 top leaders by the ICC. Makasi told us that LRA chief Joseph Kony is fixated on making the ICC warrants disappear, and that it’s the only reason he’s remained in peace negotiations since July 2006, which has brought the longest relief from violence in the 20-year conflict suffered by the people of northern Uganda. He added that Kony is fully aware of the arrests of Charles Taylor and Thomas Lubanga, and does not want to follow them to the ICC courtroom in The Hague.
Makasi says Kony has no intention of signing a peace agreement even if the warrants are removed, and it is only fear of the ICC that has kept him quiet and at the peace table all this time. Apparently Kony’s closest ally, the ruthless Vincent Otti, actually wanted to achieve a peace deal, and it was disagreement over this that led Kony to murder Otti in October. The murder of Otti has not been officially confirmed, but Makasi is sure of it and other LRA fighters that defected after him have all said he was killed in a very brutal way, plus no one has heard a peep from Otti since October - and this silence from a man that used to get on his satellite phone every day making calls to radio stations and political leaders. There are indications that the LRA is under great strain, and MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, has set up stations to receive and demobilize LRA soldiers that defect. It appears the ICC is having a beneficial effect for the people of northern Uganda, by keeping the LRA at bay and weakening its morale. The ICC indictees are finally realizing that amnesty is not an option.
A remarkable effect of the ICC interventions are the fierce debates it has generated about the role of justice in the transition to sustainable peace. When we spent the month of December 2006 in northern Uganda, many local civil society leaders were calling for the ICC to remove the arrest warrants it had issued for the top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), saying that it was hampering the peace negotiations, and that traditional reconciliation mechanisms such as Mato Oput would suffice to achieve justice for the massive crimes committed by the LRA. Now that’s changed.
We revisited Pagak Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp leader Dennis Lemoyi and interviewed him again a year later, which gave us valuable insights into how thinking about justice is trending in northern Uganda. Now civil society leaders are recommending that a special national court be created in Uganda to mount a “complementarity” challenge to the ICC warrants, saying that the crimes committed during the war, by both the LRA and the UPDF (Ugandan army) can be judged at home and meet international standards of accountability. We’ll have to wait to see how things develop, but that this discussion is even happening constitutes a positive outcome of the ICC intervention.
We walked with Hema tribal spokesman Professor Pilo Kamaragi through the killing fields of Bogoro in the Ituri region of eastern Congo, site of the massacre allegedly perpetrated by local warlord Germain ‘Simba’ Katanga - human skeletons were strewn throughout the tall elephant grass. Katanga was charged by the International Criminal Court with 3 counts of crimes against humanity and 6 counts of war crimes for his involvement in killings, pillaging, using child soldiers, and sexual enslavement during an attack on the town of Bogoro. From a documentary filmmaking point of view, we (our crew: Pamela Yates, Paco de Onís, Melle van Essen, Susan Meiselas, Leo Franssen, Lotsove Tryphonette and Pastor Marrion P’Udongo) had the serendipity of being in Ituri in October when Katanga, who led the FRPI militia, was taken into custody by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to The Hague, to the same prison where his arch-enemy Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Hema UPC militia, has been since last year facing charges of conscripting child soldiers, a war crime under the Rome Statute which governs the ICC. When speaking to members of each of these alleged warlords’ ethnic groups, the Hema for Lubanga and the Lendu for Katanga, they often tell you that their leaders were protectors, not perpetrators. Each group claims to have battled the other in self-defense against genocidal attacks. The tragic result is that tens of thousands of members of both ethnic groups were viciously massacred, raped, dismembered, and a whole generation of youth traumatized by their forced participation in the brutality of war. Until the ICC took Katanga, Lubanga’s Hema people complained that the ICC was being unjust in singling out their leader, but it turns out that he was just the first of several warlords the ICC has in its sights.
Now that Katanga is in custody as well, leaders of both groups are claiming that it’s their Ituri region that’s been targeted, so the conversation has shifted to a national perspective on justice. But they seem resigned to let justice take its course with Lubanga and Katanga, and are actually calling for the ICC to arrest “bigger fish” in Congo’s capital Kinshasa, and to intervene in the Lake Kivu region where so much unspeakable violence is raging.
Even though in recent years there has been less fighting in Ituri and its provincial capital Bunia, the region still bears deep scars of war: buildings in collapse, weapons plentiful, and a people living with a legacy of horror - we saw photos of heads on spikes, rows of heads and severed arms held aloft, displayed as trophies of war by smiling victors, taken as recently as 2003. Yet another replay of humankind’s capacity for unbounded cruelty. Our hotel in Bunia had a “No Weapons” sign on the gate,
and army deserters were assaulting travelers daily a few miles out of town.
We were also accompanied in our visit to Bogoro by one of its former residents, Professor Jean Vianney Tibasima Sahie , who took us to the ruins of the home he had to abandon when his family fled Katanga’s FRPI militia attack. The lush verdant growth of the high central African plateau had engulfed the property, and after pushing our way through shoulder-high grass for a hundred yards we came upon the remains of stately stone arches and hardwood balustrades, ringing an elegant semi-circle veranda overlooking Lake Albert in the far distance.
The specter of another time, conjuring serenity, prosperity and aspiration, a world brought down. It also highlighted the fragility and ephemeral quality of communities riven by underlying tribal tensions wound tight for so long, unresolved, and exacerbated by the colonial experience. Even as I write these lines Kenya has exploded along tribal fault lines due to a disputed presidential election. It was sad and sobering to stand in those evocative remains of a home, in the dignified and melancholy presence of Professor Jean.
It will take time to bring Ituri back to the prosperous agricultural and mining region it once was, and ending the culture of impunity is an essential element in the process - the ICC arrests have made clear that perpetrators will be brought to account, which is a major step towards a lasting peace.
The MONUC peacekeepers have played a stabilizing role by administering a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program which has helped bring thousands of rebel fighters (many of them child soldiers) back into their communities. After Katanga was taken to The Hague, the last 3 remaining warlords in the Ituri region turned themselves in to accept a DDR offer, apparently no longer seeing any future as rebels and wanting to avoid the ICC.
In the midst of all this catastrophe, we were inspired by local heroes we found working against formidable odds to strengthen justice in the Congo:
Major Innocent, a military judge who keeps a copy of the ICC Rome Statute on his desk to guide him as he judges Congolese military officers and soldiers for human rights abuses. We filmed a hearing at the military tribunal in Bunia, where the defendant had received a life sentence in absentia (he escaped during a previous trial but was later recaptured) for participating in the killing of UN peacekeepers in 2005, and was appealing his sentence. While we weren’t there for the final ruling, in our interview Major Innocent told us that he thinks it’s important to set an example by imposing harsh sentences for human rights violations, so it probably didn’t bode well for the defendant. Even though the defendant was an irregular militia and not in the Congolese army, civilians who commit crimes with military weapons in Congo can be tried under military law. We also met dynamic Richard Pituwa, who runs Canal Revelation, a radio station that has become a crucial forum for talking about justice through “Interactive Radio for Justice”,
a program he produces with the irrepressible human rights activist Wanda Hall. Bunia has no newspapers, and electricity is so sporadic that TV is not a strong medium, but radios run on batteries and are ubiquitous, so radio is far and away the dominant source of information in the region. People call in all day long on their cellphones, and we filmed a fascinating program they hosted with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo phoning in from The Hague to take questions about the Katanga arrest from local callers. Justice on the ground and on the air.
After spending October filming in Ituri surrounded by the wreckage of war, we headed for Uganda in a small UN plane, bucking like a bronco through massive thunderclouds towering over the Great Lakes of Africa.
On the same day, Patrick Opiyo Makasi, a Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Director of Operations, arrived in Uganda after escaping from the LRA redoubt in Congo’s Garamba National Park. It took some doing, but we managed to interview him and got a first-hand account of mounting tensions within the LRA due to the arrest warrants issued for their 5 top leaders by the ICC. Makasi told us that LRA chief Joseph Kony is fixated on making the ICC warrants disappear, and that it’s the only reason he’s remained in peace negotiations since July 2006, which has brought the longest relief from violence in the 20-year conflict suffered by the people of northern Uganda. He added that Kony is fully aware of the arrests of Charles Taylor and Thomas Lubanga, and does not want to follow them to the ICC courtroom in The Hague.
Makasi says Kony has no intention of signing a peace agreement even if the warrants are removed, and it is only fear of the ICC that has kept him quiet and at the peace table all this time. Apparently Kony’s closest ally, the ruthless Vincent Otti, actually wanted to achieve a peace deal, and it was disagreement over this that led Kony to murder Otti in October. The murder of Otti has not been officially confirmed, but Makasi is sure of it and other LRA fighters that defected after him have all said he was killed in a very brutal way, plus no one has heard a peep from Otti since October - and this silence from a man that used to get on his satellite phone every day making calls to radio stations and political leaders. There are indications that the LRA is under great strain, and MONUC, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, has set up stations to receive and demobilize LRA soldiers that defect. It appears the ICC is having a beneficial effect for the people of northern Uganda, by keeping the LRA at bay and weakening its morale. The ICC indictees are finally realizing that amnesty is not an option.
A remarkable effect of the ICC interventions are the fierce debates it has generated about the role of justice in the transition to sustainable peace. When we spent the month of December 2006 in northern Uganda, many local civil society leaders were calling for the ICC to remove the arrest warrants it had issued for the top commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), saying that it was hampering the peace negotiations, and that traditional reconciliation mechanisms such as Mato Oput would suffice to achieve justice for the massive crimes committed by the LRA. Now that’s changed.
We revisited Pagak Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp leader Dennis Lemoyi and interviewed him again a year later, which gave us valuable insights into how thinking about justice is trending in northern Uganda. Now civil society leaders are recommending that a special national court be created in Uganda to mount a “complementarity” challenge to the ICC warrants, saying that the crimes committed during the war, by both the LRA and the UPDF (Ugandan army) can be judged at home and meet international standards of accountability. We’ll have to wait to see how things develop, but that this discussion is even happening constitutes a positive outcome of the ICC intervention.
site of the massacre allegedly perpetrated by local warlord Germain ‘Simba’ Katanga - human skeletons were strewn throughout the tall elephant grass. Katanga was charged by the International Criminal Court with 3 counts of crimes against humanity and 6 counts of war crimes for his involvement in killings, pillaging, using child soldiers, and sexual enslavement during an attack on the town of Bogoro.
