Italian priest calls lack of media focus on Ugandan conflict 'a sin'

Published: 2004-02-09

ROME (CNS) -- After witnessing the aftermath of a massacre in northern Uganda, the head of the Rome-based MISNA news agency said the lack of media attention to Uganda's decades-long rebel conflict was a sin. "If I were to describe in one word what I am seeing in northern Uganda, I would say it was 'hell.' The killing, the devastation, it is absolute hell," Comboni Father Giulio Albanese said in a Feb. 9 phone interview from Uganda with Catholic News Service. Father Albanese was visiting a missionary Feb. 5 near Lira, in northern Uganda, when he heard news that dozens of people were being treated at the hospital after rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army attacked and burned the Abia refugee camp the night of Feb. 4. "The majority of the people in the hospital had been cut into slices; they were in very serious condition and lacked so much blood. Those who could told us about the situation in the village, and they said there were others still there in need of help," he said.

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