Kony video goes viral, sparks global furore

A US advocacy group’s video urging elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army has become an international sensation on YouTube, attracting more that 21 million views in just three days last week.

The 30-minute film, entitled “Kony 2012,” has gained worldwide attention in part because of the criticisms that other organisations have aimed at Invisible Children, the group that made the movie.

Invisible Children, which has thousands of supporters at US universities, derives its name from the young “night commuters” who each evening some years ago sought refuge in Gulu town in northern Uganda in order to avoid abduction by LRA marauders operating in rural areas.

“Kony 2012” gives the impression that such movements of children are still occurring, even though the LRA has not been active in Uganda since 2006. (See 'Kony 2012' external video link on Youtube)

That is a “misrepresentation,” writes Daily Monitor journalist Angelo Izama in a blog posting that was excerpted last week on the widely viewed website of the Washington-based journal Foreign Policy. Noting that the video depicts crimes “from a bygone era,” Izama wrote that many of the night commuters are today “still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/Aids and hepatitis.”

Izama’s comments give the impression that the government in Kampala — and Invisible Children — are ignoring the plight of children in northern Uganda now that they are no longer threatened by the LRA.

The video also suggests that the LRA’s ranks include “30,000 mindless child soldiers.” Analysts point out that this figure refers to a United Nations estimate of the total number of children abducted by Kony’s followers during the past two decades. The US government puts the current number of LRA fighters at about 250.

The LRA’s depredations are not consigned to a bygone era, however. The UN reported that Kony’s followers had attacked villages in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in February, killing one person and abducting 17 others.

“Kony 2012” has prompted some commentators in the US to call attention to alleged human rights abuses committed by the Ugandan People’s Defence Force. Michael Wilkerson, author of the Foreign Policy critique of Invisible Children, charges, for example, that Uganda is barely (if at all) democratic.... Corruption is rampant, social services are minimal, and human rights abuses by the government common.”

Wilkerson adds that “Kony 2012” gives viewers the misleading impression that President Obama may soon withdraw the 100 US military advisors he sent to central Africa earlier this year to help hunt down the remnants of the LRA.

An article last November in the US journal Foreign Affairs suggests that Obama may have dispatched those advisors as “a kind of payback” for Uganda’s contributions to the Amisom force fighting in Somalia. “In addition,” the Foreign Affairs article points out, “geologists recently discovered oil in and around Lake Albert — another reason for closer cooperation and for stabilizing the area.”