Uganda National Journalism Awards 2015 – Local reporting finalists

Honourable mention – Smuggling in the West Nile by Emmanuel Ojok, Radio Pacis

Runner-up – How sun lights up in West Nile by Felix Warom, Daily Monitor

**Winner – Remembering NRM’s massacre at Namukora by Jimmy Kwo, Daily Monitor

Jimmy Katura Wokorach-Oboi (penname Jimmy Kwo) is a reporter with Daily Monitor and 102 Mega FM, a radio station in Gulu. Mr Wokorach-Oboi is largely a self-taught journalist. He has a print journalism certificate from the UMCAT School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Kampala, but has honed his skill through persistence and self-driven learning.

For more than a decade he has written for a number of media outlets like New Vision, Daily Monitor, Mega FM and Rupiny newspaper.

The story – The 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda was traumatic, complex and multilayered. It was not just about the various rebel groups, like the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army, and their infliction of great suffering on local people. In the shadows, spoken about only in whispers were numerous claims of atrocities committed by the National Resistance Army (later the Uganda People’s Defense Force). In 2014 President Yoweri Museveni himself admitted that the government forces did commit murderer in the region, but he did not go as far as to assign specific blame.

This story tells the tale of a terrible crime committed by government forces in Namokora, the sub-county in Kitgum district where former Ugandan president, General Tito Okello Lutwa, was born. To date the exact number of people who died in the army invasion is unknown, but this report memorialized the few whose deaths are confirmed. It also highlights the concerns of the local population about the potential effects of the ‘massacre’.

Recently, the National Memory and Peace Documentation Centre based in Kitgum archived this article as part of its historical documentation about the war in northern Uganda.