After the disputed December 1980 election returned Milton Obote to power, Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army began a guerrilla war in the Buganda countryside north and northwest of Kampala, the area that became known as the Luwero Triangle. To cut the guerrillas off from rural support, the government army (UNLA) launched 'Operation Bonanza' in January 1983 and moved almost 750,000 people into internment camps under military control; people found outside the camps were treated as rebels. Human Rights Watch, quoting Ofcansky, records that UNLA troops destroyed towns, villages and farms, that Amnesty International reported at least 36 mass grave sites, and that the Banyarwanda community lost 45,000-60,000 people. Death toll estimates range from about 12,000 to 500,000, and the Library of Congress study notes piles of skulls found in bush clearings years later. Obote was overthrown by his own army in July 1985 and the NRA took Kampala in January 1986; Uganda's Commission of Inquiry into Violations of Human Rights (1986-94) heard testimony on the period but its 720-page report was never published, and Human Rights Watch notes that Obote was never called to account. The later camps of northern Uganda are a separate entry, 'northern-uganda-protected-camps'.
The Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA) of Milton Obote's second government, fighting Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance Army, cleared the Luwero Triangle north of Kampala, killing civilians and herding the population into military-controlled camps
The low end is a UK government figure of about 12,000 killed on all sides, reported by Helen Epstein. The US State Department estimated by 1984 that 100,000-200,000 civilians had been killed in the Luwero Triangle by the Obote government (Human Rights Watch, 1999), though Assistant Secretary Elliott Abrams told Congress the numbers could not be documented; the refugee advocate Roger Winter put the toll at 'perhaps a quarter-of-a-million' from direct violence or enforced starvation; and Human Rights Watch, quoting Ofcansky, reports an ICRC claim after the war that at least 300,000 had died in the Triangle. The Library of Congress study gives an estimate 'as high as 500,000' for all of Uganda in 1981-85, which is wider than this entry. Epstein argues most deaths probably resulted from disease and hunger in displacement rather than killing, so the upper figures include excess mortality.
The Library of Congress study and Human Rights Watch (quoting Ofcansky and Amnesty International) documented mass killing, mass graves, internment camps and the destruction of villages and farms; the US State Department's 1985 report recorded mass burials and killings of civilians by UNLA soldiers; the CSVR summary of the Ugandan commission records torture, rape, abduction and sexual slavery of women in the Luwero Triangle; Roger Winter described enforced starvation.
Uganda