October 5th

October 5th is about a desperate young man whose life was in real danger because of his ethnic group under a wanton murderous dictator in his native country. Hundreds and thousands of regular people disappeared from their homes, workplaces or communities without a trace, or an explanation from the junta. The number of allegations made against the regime was staggering; estimated at three hundred thousand killed. Many of the victims lost their lives in a brutal manner--bludgeoned to death with sledgehammers and iron bars or tortured to death in prisons and police stations all over the country. The dictator's greatest threat came from the supporters of the former president he toppled from power and his kinsmen--the Lango and the Acholi. The Lango and the Acholi officers, academicians, and civilians were collected and summarily executed in an action many observers described as a systematic genocide. The young man was oblivious to the imminent danger facing him until a very concerned American friend of his reminded him of it with an urgent take-it-or-leave-it plan for his escape. His ordeal is a gripping personal story of a survivor with little or no hope at all of making it alive across the borders through the country's only heavily guarded international airport.