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Witness History

Rehabilitating Kony's child soldiers in Uganda

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2024

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2002, a Catholic nun arrived in Gulu, a town in northern Uganda, to help set up a sewing school for locals.

For years, the town had been the target of brutal attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army, led by the warlord Joseph Kony.

The rebel group was known for kidnapping children and forcing them into becoming soldiers.

As the LRA was being chased out of Uganda, those who were captured arrived at the school seeking refuge.

Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe shares the shocking stories of those who escaped captivity with George Crafer.

(Photo: Sister Rosemary at St Monica's. Credit: Sewing Hope Foundation)

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds.

0:02.0

Hello everyone, it's Michelle Vassage, and welcome to my podcast Rule Breakers.

0:06.0

But you'll sit down and be bright.

0:08.0

Celebrating women's voices.

0:10.0

You're very welcome to now you're asking with me, Marion Keys Keys and me Tara Flynn.

0:14.7

This is juicy. No limits, no limits.

0:17.1

Celebrating women.

0:18.6

Where to be a woman is the podcast celebrating the best of women's well-being. We're on a quest to find out

0:24.4

where in the world women are living their best lives. Celebrate yourself.

0:28.6

Lesson on BBC Sounds. me George Craver. We're going back to Uganda in the mid 2000s.

0:46.0

A Catholic nun has been taking in women and girls who have escaped captivity from a rebel army.

0:52.0

She's discovering what horrors one young woman experienced.

0:55.0

It's a shocking and distressing story from the beginning.

0:59.0

She was forced to kill her own sister and when she killed her sister she always felt guilty.

1:05.6

She said whenever I think about killing my sister I feel like I killed my own self and I cannot forgive myself.

1:17.0

To make sense of what you've just heard, we need to go back a few decades.

1:21.0

In the late 1980s, a group called the Lords Resistance Army led by

1:25.3

the warlord Joseph Konya began killing and displacing thousands near the

1:29.8

border between Uganda and South Sudan. Their aim is to overthrow the Ugandan government

1:35.8

and rule the country based on the biblical Ten Commandments.

1:40.0

The LRA has been terrorised in Northern Uganda since 1987.

1:45.0

Their primary recruiting tactic is to abduct children from their villages in Northern

...

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