Independent candidate Prof Venansius Baryamureeba has promised that if elected president he will institute a truth commission over atrocities committed in northern Uganda.
Baryamureeba said Uganda has experienced wars which led to several deaths that require a truth commission for national healing. He was on Friday campaigning in Gulu town. He said it is only through a truth commission and reconciliation that the wounds caused by war will heal.
For many years peace advocates, political leaders from northern Uganda and transitional justice experts have called for a truth commission on atrocities committed in northern Uganda and other parts of the country.
According to the former Makerere University Vice Chancellor, the commission will ensure that such horrific acts should never happen again.
Leaders from the Acholi like the former leader of Opposition in the 8th parliament, Prof Morris Ogenga Latigo have in the past voiced their support for a truth commission.
“We need to agree and to quickly institute a National Truth and Reconciliation process to lay to ourselves bare to one another, to forgive and ask to be forgiven, and to commit to walking the next 50 years in unison, love and mutual respect regardless of our ethnicity, social standing, and religious and political inclination,” Latigo said
According to Latigo, election rigging, adversarial politics and suppression and violence that have characterized politics of Uganda over the last 50 years has bred distrust among Ugandans that can be addressed through a truth commission.
