Crazed Militia Leader Targets Uganda's Children

A cult-like militia group has been terrorizing the children of Uganda for the past 17 years. It's led by a former altar boy who's now a spirit medium.

He wants to rule Uganda with his own version of the Ten Commandments. His cruelty is almost unbelievable, and his soldiers are abducted children.

It's a kidnapping nightmare that won't go away. And it has thousands of Ugandan children on the run. Every evening, here in the northern city of Gulu, an estimated 20,000 village children arrive to spend the night.

It's for these frightened children that pastor Sam Childers keeps returning to Africa. The children could be kidnapped and much worse at the hands of a rogue guerrilla movement.

Childers said, "When it's just starting to get dark in the evening, the children will come walking into town. And then they'll sleep on the streets, they'll sleep under the porches." He added, "And then in the early morning, when it's just starting to get daylight, they'll walk back to their villages."

Further, Childers said, "I've seen the children already nailed to trees. You'll see the babies laying alongside the trees, where they'll grab them by the ankles, bust their heads on trees. I mean, the stuff that this man has been doing, we need to get together now and it needs to stop."

The man behind the atrocities is Joseph Kony, head of the rebel movement known as the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA. And for years he's been attacking travelers and raiding villages across northern Uganda.

Childers said, "This man is known to be one of the worst terrorists of the world. In the last year he has displaced over 800,000 people."

The Ugandan army has been unable to stop Kony, who often escapes into Sudan, where he's had the support of Sudan's Islamic government.

For some of the children orphaned by the fighting, Childers has opened a small children's village in Nimele, just inside Sudan.

Here some 30 children live in relative safety, and many embrace the same Christian faith that motivates this Pennsylvania preacher.

Back in Uganda, Childers urges youth to follow Christ. The appeal may be familiar to many in this audience. Uganda has a high proportion of Christian believers.

But salvation for these children also means stopping the LRA.

Childers said, "If we wait another day, there's more children dying. If we wait another month, there's more. If we wait another year... Kony displaced over 800,000 this past year. What's it going to be, 600,000...or excuse me, 16 million next year? I think that now is the time we need to stop it."

Joseph Kony's days may be numbered. Several of his top commanders have recently been killed or captured. In addition, hundreds of L.R.A fighters have surrendered their weapons during a government amnesty.

For more information, contact:

Sam Childers

UK Missions Society