The nine-year-old who learned to kill or be killed
Daniel Nelson
Here’s a moral dilemma: a nine-year-old boy is captured by a murderous militia and made to watch and later take part in gruesome murders. As a child and later a commanding member of the gang he commits atrocious murders, torture, rapes. Should he be treated as a victim or a perpetrator?
That’s the theme of Theatre of Violence, a riveting documentary about Dominic Ongwen’s trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The contrast between the strictly choreographed, antiseptic theatre of the court and the unscripted, ambiguous complexities of life in northern Uganda make compulsive viewing.
The court is geared towards certainties, rules and clear judgement: the Acholi people attempt to deal with the messiness of life through ambiguity and compromise.
The scale of LRA atrocities is enormous, but in responding to a major humanitarian disaster, with perhaps two million people displaced, does the International Court represent a continuation of colonial ideas? “Punishment is no good - we must restore social harmony.”
The prosecution admits Ongwen’s story is a tragedy (echoed by many of the 20,000 other abducted boys and girls) “but it can’t be the lifetime free-pass to commit atrocities”.
There’s a clear political divide, too, which the film highlights: the West basically sees events in northern Uganda as a battle between Good (President Yoweri Museveni and his troops) and Evil (former alter boy Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army). The Acholi have reason to fear the terrifying brutality of the LRA, but they also point to the depredations of those representing state power:
“We don’t blame the child. We blame the Government for not protecting the people.”
“Why is Ongwen facing the gallows but not the Government? The other side was equally culpable. We want justice - but for Museveni and his government, for the genocide.”
Ongwen’s chief lawyer, Kkrispus Ayena, a former MP, uses such arguments to make the case that his client is not responsible for the way his life turned out because he was brainwashed and knew no better.
Ayena also wants to explain to the White man the kind of country Uganda is, and the potential consequences of a guilty verdict. (“The court has opened a Pandora’s box in Uganda,” says an interviewee.) Much of the film is seen through his eyes, as the camera follows him to Acholi villages, where the man abducted with Ongwen is among those he talks to.
In the end, the court expresses confidence with its verdict and its establishment of the truth. But the 25-year sentence leaves a lot to think about.
Theatre of Violence is showing at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London, 8-26 March. Info: https://ff.hrw.org/london