----- Original Message ----- 
From: Elum Aniap Godfrey Ayoo 
To: [log in to unmask] ; [log in to unmask] 
Cc: Edward Mulindwa ; [log in to unmask] ; [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 9:33 PM
Subject: Army Asks Father Carlos to Quit North 


Army Asks Father Carlos to Quit North 

New Vision (Kampala) 
NEWS
February 11, 2004 
Posted to the web February 11, 2004 

By Emmy Allio And Dennis Ojwee
Kampala 

The circus between Fr. Carlos Rodriguez and security agencies in the north deepened yesterday, with the army asking the priest to leave the north. 

"Fr. Carlos can go anywhere in the country, but he must quit the north because he has been engaging in practices incompatible with his diplomatic and religious status," army spokesman Major Shaban Bantariza said yesterday. 

On the weekend, Gulu district security committee recommended to President Yoweri Museveni to deport the Catholic missionary for "spreading false information prejudicial to national security". 

Bantariza said, "Get him out of the north for his own safety and easy facilitation of the end of the conflict in the north." 

But the Gulu resident district commissioner, Max Omeda, said the Government had not taken a position on Carlos. 

Omeda said, "What the security committee did was to float the idea of deporting him to the Government. This is not the first time Carlos has written fabricated material. But there are moments when he has also published some good material. I want to meet him and hear his side of the story." 

The security committee and the army were enraged by the statement the priest issued on the fire in Pabbo camp. 

Carlos, an official of the Acholi Religious Leader's Peace Initiative (ARPI), said he was not aware of plans to deport him. 

"I cannot comment on something in form of a rumour. Nobody has officially communicated to me that I am not wanted here (in northern Uganda)," he said yesterday. 

He referred The New Vision to the director general of the Internal Security Organisation, Col. Elly Kayanja, for further information. 

Bantariza said Carlos alleged that 6,000 people were arrested, that the fire in Pabbo camp was started by a soldier, that people who tried to escape the fire were shot at and that a priest was interrupted during mass. 

Bantariza said the camp had been a hideout for rebel collaborators, adding that the army recovered 800 bullets and some uniforms. 

A source at ARPI told IRIN, a UN news agency, "He (Carlos) is critical of the Government's military approach to the crisis in the north, and he sometimes exposes things they don't want exposed. They've been looking for a reason to crack down on him for some time." 

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"And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, 'When will you be satisfied?' We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities (.) No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream". (Martin Luther King, 1964 Nobel Peace prize laureate, assassinated for his struggle)

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