An ex-‘wife’ to notorious Lords Resistance rebel leader Joseph Kony has written a book detailing her experience in the bush with the brutal rebel group.
Evelyn Amony, one of a dozen young girls abducted and forcefully married to Joseph Kony has written a 181 page autobiography ‘‘I Am Evelyn Amony: Personal Autobiography of a Survivor.’’
The book is published by the University of Wisconsin University Press (United Stated) and was released Thursday at Bomah Hotel in Gulu.
In the book Amony writes about her childhood and her time in the bush as wife to the indicted LRA leader wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
This is Amony’s second book about her experience with the LRA. Her first was ‘‘Courageous Woman,’’ published in 2012.
The books are published with support from the Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP), an advocacy group that works with war survivors in northern Uganda.
In her books, she refers to Kony as ‘‘Ladit’’ an Acholi word which means ‘‘sir.’’
In her newest book. Amony who used the pseudo name Betty Aol (LRA abductees used pseudo names for fear of reprisal attacks from the rebel group if they escaped) writes about how she became Kony’s wife. She writes that one morning in 1997, while she was aged 14, and already in rebel captivity, Kony summoned all his ‘‘wives’’ and told them he (Kony) had decided to ‘‘marry’’ another wife. She writes that this happened in Aruu, South Sudan.
In her book, Amony also writes about unsuccessful plants to get rid of the pregnancy which eventually resulted in the birth of a baby boy she named ‘‘Bakita.’’
On one occasion Amony remembers that Kony travelled to Khartoum and came back with a jacket as ‘gift’ for her. She notes in her book that these made the other ‘wives’’ of the rebel leader jealous.
According to Amony, once Kony suffered from Yellow Fever and was taken to Khartoum for treatment. She asked that she (Amony) visits him which she did and found him in bad shape.
The book is going for Ugx 100,000. Proceeds from the book will go towards supporting the work of Women Advocacy Network (WAN), a group formed by over 500 women who were abducted and spent time in LRA captivity before escaping or being rescued.
Grace Achan, another former LRA abductee also published a book ‘‘Not yet sunset’’.
The women on Thursday at the launch of the book tasked government to investigate all the sexual related violence committed against girls during the war in northern Uganda.
1 Comment
With all the due respect to what the children in the North have suffered, we should be mindful that big organisations have used them for political reasons and to gain finance out of their misery. How come we hear more about what Kony did than what the sitting government soldiers did? – Those armies were just as brutal, their actions continue in Congo, Sudan. We should not bee fooled.