Portrayals of Perpetrators and Victims in Northern Uganda

by Melanie, Claire, Daniella, and Melissa
December 4, 2005

web project for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Holocaust
UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2005
(course homepage, web projects index page)

Project Introduction (back to top)

This web project about the current (2005) genocide in Uganda is comprised of the following four papers:

• The film "Invisible Children" and the History of the Lord's Resistance Army
  by Melanie Lehman
• The History of the Ugandan Government and Conflicts
  by Claire Marblestone
• The Media's Portrayal of the Modern Day Crisis in Uganda
  (based on a survey of New York Times articles from 1988 to 2005)
  by Daniella Elghanayan
• A Comparison between the Nazi Holocaust and Uganda
  by Melissa Black

Annotated Bibliography (back to top)

1. Hostile to Democracy: The Movement System and Political Repression in Uganda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999.
   This book was written and published by the Human Rights Watch, which is a non-government organization that helps oppressed people around the world. Although it provides a good amount of information on the history, politics, leadership, and NGO involvement in Uganda, it is biased against the Ugandan leadership for its crimes against humanity. The book ends with a chapter encouraging involvement in Uganda in order to help advocate human rights.
2. Leggett, Ian. Uganda. Oxford: Oxfam Fountain Publishers, 2001.
3. Otika, Peter. "The Acholi of Uganda Face Starvation and Genocide." The Black Commentator. 3 November 2005. http://www.blackcommentator/93_otika.html
   The Black Commentator is an online resource that is based out of Jenkintown Pennsylvania. The author of this article, Peter Okema Otika, is the president of the African Students Association at the University of Pittsburg. He is also a good first hand source of the information because he is an Acholi from northern Uganda.
4. http://lcweb2.loc.gov.frd.cs.ugtoc.html
   This site is from the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. This organization was created in order to provide research information to US citizens about foreign countries’ histories and current affairs. The site as a whole was updated recently on November 9, 2005, but the Ugandan sites I looked at had not been updated since December of 1990. A number of different authors contributed to the Uganda site and created detailed reports on various topics such as: Ugandan history, society, the economy, government, and national security. The website has a reliable backing and is highly visited.
5. LA Times on the Web, "Horror in Uganda." July 1997.
   The Los Angeles Times is one of the country’s most relied upon sources of news. It covers a wide variety of news featuring everything from sports to stories around the world. Millions of people rely upon the Los Angeles Times every day for their information about world affairs.
6. Human Rights Watch on the Web, "The Scar of Death: Children Abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda." 1997.
7. Wikipedia: "Lord’s Resistance Army."
   Wikipedia is a free-content encyclopedia, written collaboratively by people from all around the world. The site is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit entries simply by clicking on the edit this page link.
8. "Lord’s Resistance Army." 2000. http://www.globalsecurtiy.org/military/world/lra.html
   This website features reliable information about military and political based information. Different sources throughout the world are collected for the articles. The authors of the website have real life experience from the Cold War in areas of technology, politics, defense, and scientific research.
9. "Uganda." http://www.imcworldwide.org/loc_ugand.shtml
   The International Medical Corps focuses on medical aid to people in need. They are currently working on relief efforts in Uganda among other places where a vast amount of the population suffers from the HIV virus and AIDS. The IMC is a nonprofit humanitarian organization with a lot of hands on information about the current situation in Uganda.
10. Invisible Children. Dir. Jason, Bobby, and Larren; 2005.
    A 60 minute documentation on the war in northern Uganda where children as young as the age of five years old are being forced to kidnap and kill other children.
11. New York Times: 7 articles
    I found these articles at the New York Times website, www.nytimes.com. My search yielded 919 articles and of them I selected these 7 for this bibliography because they illustrate my claim that the media does not portray the war in Uganda to its full extent.
    • Perlez, Jane, "In AIDS-Stricken Uganda Area, The Orphans Struggle to Survive," The New York Times, June 10, 1990.
    • Perlez, Jane, "Of Sudan's Woes, War is the Worst," The New York Times, June 19, 1998
    • Perlez, Jane, "More Fighting Brings Hunger to Sudan," The New York Times, October 3, 1998.
    • Lacey, Marc, "World Briefing: Africa: Uganda: Rebels Propose Cease-Fire," The New York Times, October 17, 2002.
    • Stevenson, Richard W., "Bush Has Praise for Uganda In Its Fight Against AIDS," The New York Times, July 12, 2003.
    • Gavin, Michael, "Uganda's Animal Kingdom," The New York Times, June 20, 2004.
    • "World Briefing: Africa: Uganda: War Cited In H.I.V. Surge," The New YorkTimes, June 29, 2004.