GULU: Every evening, Everlyn Ayo left her village in northern Uganda, trekking with thousands of other children known as “night commuters” hoping to escape the horrors of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.
The messianic Kony, whose case is finally being heard by the International Crime Court (ICC) from Tuesday, led one of the world’s most barbaric insurgencies, massacring and mutilating tens of thousands of people across the region, kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers and sexual slaves.
Ayo saw the brutality first hand when Kony’s forces attacked her school in Nwoya district when she was around five years old.
“The rebels raided the school, killed and cooked our teachers in big drums and we were forced to eat their remains,” she told AFP from her home in the nearby city of Gulu.
Twenty years ago, Kony became the first person ever issued with an arrest warrant by the ICC, though his war crimes hearing will be in absentia since he has never been caught.
