A new video called “KONY 2012” was released and is spreading like wildfire over the Web with almost 8 million views since it was posted on Tuesday March 5.
The video aims to raise awareness to the abuse by LRA, the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa whose leader is Joseph Kony. The LRA has been killing, abducting and raping central African people. The video was released as an effort to bring the torture Ugandan people have been suffering to an end.
“KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice,” reads the caption.
“The next 27 minutes are an experiment, but in order for it to work, you have to pay attention,” says the narrator.
Jason Russell begins the half-hour film by introducing his son Gavin and then another boy, Jacob, a former child soldier.
The Associate Press reported, “Kony, whose army abducts children and takes women as sex slaves, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity committed during a decades-long insurgency against Uganda’s government. The group has been blamed for the murder of thousands of civilians in four countries, and the U.S. classifies it as a terrorist organization.”
Kony, on the other hand, has a much different view of himself. He would consider himself a “freedom fighter,” although no one knows what he is fighting for.
The American government is aware of the killings and abuse that are going on in central Africa. President Obama sent 100 US troops to Africa to fight the LRA, and though they were weakened, they were not dismantled.
Kony is still at large.
Check out the video produced by Invisible Children.
