The question of Amnesty

Amnesty: an act of forgiveness for past offences, especially to a class of persons as a whole; a forgetting or overlooking of any past offence.

Amnesty. This is a concept  that I have been struggling with lately, particularly with regards to its potential effectiveness in helping a war torn people/country heal from past atrocities and human rights violations. Currently I am in Uganda, a country that continues to struggle with how to balance bringing LRA perpetrators to justice and how to heal from the violence and trauma the rebel group inflicted. A recent on-line article put the dilemma Uganda faces well, stating: 

"The arrest of a senior Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander has reignited debate in Uganda about what to do with alleged war criminals: let them go, to encourage other rebels to surrender; or prosecute them in the name of accountability and justice."

Caesar Acellam Otto

The senior commander the article refers to is a man by the name of Caesar Acellam Otto. As one of Joseph Kony's top commanders, Caesar is directly responsible for the torture, murder and forced recruitment of countless individuals (both children and adults) from northern Uganda. And yet, when questioned during an interview (see New Vision newspaper) following his arrest about crimes against humanity that the LRA committed, he "threw his hands in the air and stated, 'the Ugandan Government passed a Bill in Parliament of blanket amnesty. So all rebels who left the bush before me were granted amnesty. Why not me? Why should I fear?" When Caesar was asked whether he felt remorse for his involvement in the before mentioned human rights offences, he stated, "in the military, there is no word like excuse. Therefore, I cannot apologise."

The UN Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict states Caesar and other LRA commanders are "responsible for the most egregious violations committed against children in the central African region." And yet from what I have been reading so far in the UG newspapers and on-line, it seems that even for big-time perpetrators of past violence like Caesar, there is a strong push for amnesty. In other words, Caesar and others would end up getting away with their crimes completely unpunished. I am left wondering how I would feel about such criminals being let go in my community after they've instigated the murder of so many of my compatriots? Would I be able to "forgive and forget" in an effort to recover from the past and obtain peace? I'm honestly not so sure...