Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) Click here to see photos of the evolution of the LRA.
Thanks to an incredibly effective social media effort, #StopKony is trending on Twitter today. The campaign coincides with a new awareness-raising documentary by the group Invisible Children. Former FP intern Michael Wilkerson, now a freelance journalist and grad student at Oxford -- who has lived and reported from Uganda -- contributed this guest post on the campaign. The Trouble with #StopKony. If your Twitter and Facebook streams look anything like mine, you have probably become acquainted with the hashtag #stopkony over the last 48 hours.
That’s Joseph Kony—rebel leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) from Northern Uganda and center of a campaign by non-profit advocacy group Invisible Children. For the last three decades, the LRA has terrorized pockets of East Africa, most notoriously abducting children to staff the ranks of an army that long-ago ceased to inspire voluntary recruits. The US-based charity is broadcasting a simple message: If more people know about Kony, know that he’s a bad guy, and call on their governments to go after him, someone actually will get him, and peace and stability will return to Uganda. So please, everyone, retweet. This is the kind of story that leaves me incredibly morally conflicted. I do, however, have some serious concerns about this campaign and what it is intended to do. What would really help?
Invisible Children "Kony 2012" Leader Suggests It's About Jesus and Evangelizing. "A lot of people fear Christians, they fear Liberty University, they fear Invisible Children - because they feel like we have an agenda.
They see us and they go, "You want me to sign up for something, you want my money. You want, you want me to believe in your God. " And it freaks them out. " --- Jason Russell, speaking at Liberty University, November 7, 2011 Is Invisible Children a nonprofit devoted to human needs, or is it a ministry devoted to bringing souls to Jesus ? Judging by a talk co-founder Jason Russell gave last November at Liberty University, it would seem to be a bit of both.
Why I think the Kony 2012 Campaign Is Wrong. Stop this.
Solving War Crimes With Wristbands: The Arrogance of 'Kony 2012' - Kate Cronin-Furman & Amanda Taub - International. A viral video by a controversial group claims to fix Central African violence with awareness, but such misguided campaigns can do more harm than good.
Members of Invisible Children pose with soldiers from the Sudan People's Liberation Army near the Congo-Sudan border in 2008 / Courtesy Glenna Gordon Have you heard? Joseph Kony, brutal warlord and International Criminal Court indictee, is going to be famous like George Clooney. The Road to Hell Is Paved with Viral Videos - By David Rieff. Click here to see photos of the evolution of the LRA.
When and how so many Americans, young people in particular, were convinced, or convinced themselves, that awareness offers the key to righting wrongs wherever in the world they may be is hard to pinpoint. But whatever else it does and fails to do, Kony 2012, the 30-minute video produced by a previously obscure California- and Uganda-based charity called Invisible Children that seeks to "make Joseph Kony famous in 2012" so that this homicidal bandit leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in central Africa will be hunted down and turned over to the International Criminal Court, illustrates just how deeply engrained in American culture this assumption has now become. The real battle in Uganda. While the rest of the world jumps onto the Kony2012 bandwagon -- wrongly assuming that the main problem in Uganda is the Lord's Resistance Army -- Ugandans are worrying about the much more urgent problem plaguing their country: nodding disease.
The cause of the disease is unknown. It affects thousands of children in Northern Uganda, causing symptoms similar to epilepsy, but with more severe mental and physical retardation. How to Help African Children At Risk. KONY 2012 and the Prospects for Change. Earlier this month, more than 30 civilians were killed during armed attacks in South Kivu, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Those killings were committed not by the Lord's Resistance Army but by one of the many Congolese militias operating in the area. In recent months, those groups have been responsible for a marked increase in violence, but in most cases, such attacks go unnoticed by international media. So it was in this case: as usual, it is only thanks to local sources that we know about such events at all. Ugandans are not amused. Guest Post: I've met Joseph Kony and Kony 2012 isn't that bad. WikiLeaked cable: Invisible Children helped Ugandan security forces arrest government opponent. Mission From God: The Upstart Christian Sect Driving Invisible Children and Changing Africa - Josh Kron - International. Many of the men responsible for the Kony 2012 campaign follow something called the Emerging Church, which has become an unusual and newly influential wing of the larger evangelical mission to Africa. Jason Russell dances in an Invisible Children video.
YouTube For Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children, stumbling into Uganda's one-time civil war wasn't an accident; it was a divine calling. While the rest of the world laughs at or ponders the psych ward-ridden creator of Kony 2012, the unlikely Internet video sensation that brought both himself and a vicious Ugandan rebel instant and overwhelming fame, the mystery of his inspiration and success only grows more curious. Who is this man? "For me, that's the motivator," Russell told me in an interview early one morning from California in March, as the video was first going viral. "I can't do it without that faith," he said, calling Jesus the "ultimate storyteller. " The movement has also sparked controversy.
He had found his mission.