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| December 11, 2009 |
UP UP OKAMBO
Down Down AL BASHIR
Luis Moreno Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is tasked with prosecuting atrocity crimes in Darfur, Northern Uganda, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He and the ICC have become the symbols of justice for millions in the region; the hope that one day justice will come, is what sustains them. Countless babies in Darfur are respectfully being named Okambo.
Here are two of the countless stories told to Luis Moreno-Ocampo during his investigations;
A fourteen-year-old girl in Northern Uganda, was abducted for use as a sex slave. When a baby was born of the rapes, she named her child, What Else Can I Do.
The girl spent three days with Moreno Ocampo and the ICC legal team, sharing the details of all she had endured. After all was told, she wept, and when the lawyers apologized for having raised such painful memories, the girl said she was weeping from happiness - no one had ever taken the time to listen to her.
"You are here! I knew you would come!" a Darfuri survivor cried out, upon meeting Moreno-Ocampo. When the refugee finished telling of how he was forced to watch while his eight year-old daughter was raped and murdered, he said that at last his story was told: "Now I can die."