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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.
Ayo, now 39, will be among those following the case on her radio, thousands of miles from the sterile courtroom in The Hague.
After her school was attacked, Ayo’s family sent her to relatives in a remote village.
But that was also considered dangerous, and so she became a so-called night commuter, one of the emblematic features of a conflict that raged through much of the 1990s and 2000s.
Every night, she would walk around five kilometers, joining thousands of other children trekking through forests and jungle to stay in towns or shelters where they hoped there was less risk of being kidnapped by Kony’s army.
“We would leave the villages at 4:00 p.m. because the distances were long and we feared the villages at night. In the morning, we had to wait for daylight at around 8:00 am to return,” Ayo said.
The shelters were sporadically guarded by government troops, though they would often abandon their posts, themselves fearful of Kony’s fanatical forces.
“We were so many children that even if you did not cover yourself at night, you did not feel cold because we were squeezed together,” Ayo recalled.
Each morning, after walking for hours, they would find new horrors.
“Many times, on our return to the village, we would find blood-soaked dead bodies. Seeing all that blood as a child traumatized my eyes.
“For many years now, I do not see well, all I see is blood.”
Wilfred Lalobo, 60, showed AFP a monument built in Lukodi, just outside Gulu, for 69 people killed in an attack by Kony’s forces on May 19, 2004.
“When the rebels arrived, the government troops were few, and they fled,” he said.
“Then they started killing civilians. Some people were stabbed with bayonet, others hacked and the rest burned alive in their houses.”
“On that day, my four-year-old daughter, Akello Lalobo was among those killed. My brother’s wife and six other relatives of mine were also killed,” Lalobo added.
Kony’s trial will be closely followed here, particularly by those who have sought to rebuild the region’s many shattered lives.
Stella Angel Lanam was 10 when she was captured by the LRA, which indoctrinated her into becoming a child soldier. She spent nine years in captivity.
Now 38, she is director of the War Victims and Children Networking Initiative, which offers counselling, training and other support in the region.
Lanam said the trial was a comfort, offering some justice to Kony’s many victims.
“Even though we have passed through a lot, we cannot lose hope,” she said.
“Will the government or Kony repair me back to the way I was? No. But at least I will get justice.”
Ayo worries that the world has too quickly forgotten the extreme trauma suffered at the hands of Kony’s forces.
She hopes he will one day see real justice.
“Joseph Kony should be punished severely in a way that the world will never forget,” Ayo said.

WASHINGTON: US authorities are investigating a bogus email purportedly from a Republican lawmaker that contained malware apparently aimed at giving China insights into the Trump administration’s trade talks with Beijing, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
The malware in the email that appeared to be sent by Representative John Moolenaar in July to US trade groups, law firms and government agencies was traced by cyber analysts to a hacker group — APT41 — believed to be working for Chinese intelligence, the newspaper said.
Moolenaar, a harsh critic of Beijing, is the chairman of a congressional committee focused on strategic competition between China and the United States, including threats to US national security.

The email was the latest alleged Beijing-linked hacking operation aimed at giving China insight into recommendations to the White House for contentious trade talks with China, said the Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said it was not familiar with the details of the reported attack and that all countries face cyberattacks that are difficult to trace.
“China firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks and cybercrime,” it said in an emailed statement. “We also firmly oppose smearing others without solid evidence.” The Journal said the first malware email was sent just before US-China trade talks in Sweden that led to an extension of a truce on tariffs until early November, when US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping could meet at an Asian economic summit.
“Your insights are essential,” said the email that asked recipients to review proposed legislation attached to it.
Opening the draft legislation would have allowed the malware to give the hackers extensive access to the targeted groups, the newspaper said, adding that it could not be determined if the attacks had succeeded.
The newspaper said that the FBI and the US Capitol Police were investigating the email.
It quoted an FBI spokeswoman as saying that the bureau was aware of the email and was “working with our partners to identify and pursue those responsible.” The Capitol Police declined to comment, it said.
In a statement to the Journal, Moolenaar called the attack another example of Chinese cyber operations aimed at stealing US strategy. “We will not be intimidated,” he said.
The fake email came to light when staffers of Moolenaar’s committee started receiving puzzling inquiries about it, said the Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter.