Aboke | |
|---|---|
Municipality | |
  Aboke Location in Uganda | |
| Coordinates: 02°21′28″N32°40′59″E / 2.35778°N 32.68306°E | |
| Country |  |
| Region | Northern Region of Uganda |
| Sub-region | Lango sub-region |
| District | Kole District |
| Elevation | 3,419 ft (1,042 m) |
Aboke is a town in the Kole District of the Northern Region of Uganda. It was the location of the Aboke abductions, in October 1996. [1]
Aboke is located in Akwiridid Parish, Aboke sub-county, Kole District, in the Lango sub-region, in Northern Uganda. It is approximately 29 kilometres (18 mi), by road, north-west of the city of Lira, the largest urban centre in the sub-region. [2] This is approximately 73 kilometres (45 mi), by road, southeast of the city of Gulu, the largest urban centre in Northern Uganda. [3] The geographical coordinates of Aboke are:02°21'28.0"N, 32°40'59.0"E (Latitude:2.357778; Longitude:32.683056). [4] Aboke sits at an average elevation of 1,042 metres (3,419 ft) above sea level. [5]
Aboke lies on the old Lira-Gulu Road, just north of the Okole River. The town is the location of the five-parish Aboke sub-county. The parishes in Aboke sub-county are: (a) Akwiridid (b) Apach (c) Apuru (d) Ogwangacuma and (e) Opeta. [6]
The town is also the location of St. Mary's College Aboke Girls School, a residential girls-only secondary school administered by Italian nuns. It is at this school that the Aboke abductions occurred on the early morning of 10 October 1996. [7]
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the rebel group which started in January 1987 by Joseph Kony, began as a liberation group aimed at removing the National Resistance Movement led by Yoweri Museveni from power. [8]
In the early 1990s the LRA began to receive support and supplies from the government of Sudan at that time. The character of the LRA changed. The rebels began to target civilians, mutilating those they thought to be government sympathisers and abducting children as child soldiers and sex slaves. [8]
In the early morning hours of 10 October 1996, an estimated 300 rebels of the LRA invaded St Mary’s College Secondary School Aboke and abducted 139 young girls aged 13 to 16 years of age. Sister Rachele Frassera, an Italian nun, who was the deputy headmistress at the school, followed the rebels and negotiated the release of 109 girls. The rebels kept the other 30 as sex slaves for their commanders. [7] [8] [9]
Four of the girls died in captivity while the remaining 26 eventually escaped from Sudan, back to their families in Uganda. Many had babies fathered by the rebels, including Joseph Kony himself. The girl to escape was Catherine Ajok, who on 14 December 2008, escaped from the LRA when the UPDF bombed the LRA base in Garamba, in the DR Congo. She arrived at a UPDF base in Dungu, DRC, in March 2009. [7]
The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency is an ongoing guerrilla campaign waged by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) insurgent group since 1987. Currently, there is low-level LRA activity in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. The movement is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself the "spokesperson" of God and a spirit medium. It aims to overthrow Yoweri Museveni's Ugandan government and establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and Acholi tradition.
Joseph Rao Kony is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that formerly operated in Uganda. While initially purporting to fight against government oppression, the LRA allegedly turned against Kony's own supporters, supposedly to "purify" the Acholi people and turn Uganda into a theocracy. Kony proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium and claims he is visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom. Ideologically, the group is a syncretic mix of mysticism, Acholi nationalism, and Christian fundamentalism, and claims to be establishing a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and local Acholi tradition.
Lira is a city in the Northern Region of Uganda. It is the main municipal, administrative, and commercial centre of Lira District.
Gulu is a city in the Northern Region of Uganda. It is the commercial and administrative centre of Gulu District.
The start of the period 1994 to 2002 of the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in northern Uganda saw the conflict intensifying due to Sudanese support to the rebels. There was a peak of bloodshed in the mid-1990s and then a gradual subsiding of the conflict. Violence was renewed beginning with the offensive by the Uganda People's Defence Force in 2002.
The period from 2000 to 2006 of the Lord's Resistance Army insurgency in northern Uganda begins with the assault of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) upon LRA strongholds in South Sudan. This in turn led to a series of retaliatory attacks by the Lord's Resistance Army of an intensity not seen to since the mid-1990s. International awareness of the conflict gradually grew and in September 2005, the International Criminal Court issues warrants for the arrest of senior LRA commanders, including Joseph Kony.
Vincent Otti was deputy-leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel guerrilla army operating mainly in northern Uganda and southern Sudan. He was one of the five persons for whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first arrest warrants on 8 July 2005. Rumours of his death began to circulate in October 2007 but were not confirmed until January 2008.
Okot Odhiambo was a senior leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group which operates from Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Odhiambo was one of five people for whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its first ever arrest warrants in 2005, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2009, he announced his intention to defect from the LRA and return to Uganda if the government would agree not to surrender him to the ICC.
The Aboke abductions were the kidnapping of 139 secondary school female students from St. Mary's College boarding school by rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) on 10 October 1996, in Aboke, Kole District, Uganda. The deputy head mistress of the college, Sister Rachele Fassera of Italy, pursued the rebels and successfully negotiated the release of 109 of the girls. The Aboke abductions and Fassera's dramatic actions drew international attention, unprecedented at that time, to the insurgency in northern Uganda.
Atiak is a town in the Northern Region of Uganda on the Gulu-Nimule Road, the primary trade route between Uganda and South Sudan.
Lira Regional Referral Hospital, commonly known as Lira Hospital, is a hospital in Lira in the Northern Region of Uganda. It is the referral hospital for the districts of Amolatar, Apac, Dokolo, Lira, Kole, and Oyam.
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), also known as the Lord's Resistance Movement, is a rebel group and heterodox Christian group which operates in northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Originally known as the United Holy Salvation Army and Uganda Christian Army/Movement, its stated goals include establishment of multi-party democracy, ruling Uganda according to the Ten Commandments, and Acholi nationalism.
Bibia is a municipality in the Amuru District of the Northern Region of Uganda.
StGiNU is an advocacy group formed in the beginning of 2005 by Ugandans living in the United Kingdom. At that time, the situation in the concentration camps in Northern Uganda was claiming lives more than cross fire casualties. In the same year 2005, the Ugandan World Health Organization reported that there were 5000 excess deaths per week due to camp conditions alone. Jan Egeland UN's Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs stated that the Northern Uganda situation was worse than Iraq. Another UN representative Olara Otunnu said the situation in Northern Uganda was a secret genocide.
The following lists events that happened during 2005 in Uganda.
Sir Samuel Baker Secondary School was an only-boys boarding middle and high school before it turned to a mixed school as of 2019, located in Gulu, Gulu District in Northern Uganda. The school is named after Sir Samuel White Baker, the British explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist.
The African Union-led Regional Task Force is a multi-national military force in central Africa, authorised by the African Union's Peace and Security Council and approved by the United Nations Security Council, as part of a Regional Co-operation Initiative for the elimination of the Lord's Resistance Army.
Brigadier Richard Otto, is a military officer in the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF). He is the commanding officer of the third army division of the UPDF, based in Moroto. He was appointed to that position in May 2017. Before that, he served as the commander of the UPDF contingent in the Central African Republic, as part of the African Union Regional Task Force (AU-RTF), the regional counter-offensive against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
Angela Atim Lakor, also Angela Lakor Atim, is a female Ugandan community activist, who is the co-founder of the Watye Ki Gen organisation, which supports former female abductees of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). The organisation assists the female returnees with their children's education and helps the families to cope with the stigma of association with the LRA.
Victoria Nyanjura is a Ugandan community activist, who is the founder of Women in Action for Women (WAW), a Ugandan-based non-governmental organization, that attempts to improve the lives of young people and women through vocational training, business education and guidance in accessing community and government services.
Capital: Kole | ||
| Towns and villages |  | |
| Transport | ||
| Notable people | ||