All four report their daughters rushing downstairs on Wednesday night to tell them about a ?viral? video they had just been watching on Facebook.
Instead of featuring a dog called Fenton chasing deer through a field or a newscaster fluffing his lines this was a human rights broadcast calling on the young people of the world to rise up and demand the arrest of a war criminal most of us have never heard of. And now it seems the kids are doing just that.
One of the reasons the world?s biggest social-networking site is so popular is that it provides an easy forum to watch and share video clips.
They tend either to be of the You?ve Been Framed variety, such as
Fenton?s harassed owner desperately trying to call him back, or amusing
excerpts from far-flung TV stations.
They are said to go viral because people who like these quirky snippets can then invite their own Facebook friends to watch them too, many of whom will then repeat the process and before you know it the clips have gone halfway round the world.
The campaigning video made by the American charity Invisible Children does not look like an obvious candidate for this kind of wildfire popularity. For a start it lasts for 29 minutes ? longer than News At Ten and a positive eternity in the short- attention world of the internet. Neither does it begin in a promising way. The first five or six minutes are about the American film-maker?s loving relationship with his bouncing blond son. All very lovely for him, no doubt, but pretty sugary for the rest of us.
RELATED...
NET VIDEO TARGETS 'WAR CRIME' CHIEF
REBELS KILL 255 IN CENTRAL AFRICA
Gradually, however, the film gets to the point. This is the crusade by the film-maker, whose name is Jason Russell, to stop the reign of terror of Joseph Kony, the self-styled prophet and leader of the so-called Lord?s Resistance Army in Uganda. Kony has abducted as many as 40,000 children over the past 25 years, forcing the girls into sex slavery and turning the boys into soldiers who are sometimes then forced to murder their own parents.
Russell tells us that he first became aware of the issue when he befriended a runaway child in Uganda called Jacob. We see footage of Jacob talking emotionally about the murder of his brother by LRA troops and expressing his own wish to die. Frustratingly we learn nothing about what took Russell to Africa in the first place.
He goes on to tell of an eight-year campaign he and his friends waged to get Kony ? who is top of the International Criminal Court (ICC) wanted list ? acknowledged by the US govern- ment for the butcher he is. At first no legislators wanted to take any action because Kony was not challenging any US foreign policy interests.
But they kept up the pressure ? we are shown footage of lots of children and young people waving banners all over the world ? and finally claimed success when President Obama sent 100 Special Forces advisers to Uganda last October to help the government? of President Yoweri Museveni track down the elusive Kony.
But hiding in the dense jungle on and around Ugan- da?s northern border he still has not been found and Russell tells viewers that the campaign to ?redefine the propa- ganda that dictates who and what we pay attention to? is only just beginning.
?The people of the world see each other and protect each other,? he says, referring to the new global com- munications tools such as Facebook, Skype and Twitter, ?and it?s turning the system upside down.? He concludes his film by saying the campaigners have imposed a dead- line at the end of this year for Kony?s arrest. They intend to make him a household name in order to keep the pressure on world leaders to act. To this end they have produced hundreds of thousands of stickers, flyers and placards reading ?Kony 2012? in the manner of US presiden- tial campaign materials. Russell asks anyone viewing the video to sign a campaign pledge, send off for an action kit and donate money.
Certainly it is true that Kony deserves more global notoriety than he has so far achieved. The LRA?s roots go back to the early Eighties when a woman called Alice Lakwena claimed the Holy Spirit had ordered her to lead a movement to overthrow Museveni?s government in defence of the Acholi people of Northern Uganda, who had been targeted by the president.
LOST YOUTH: One of Kony's LRA soldiers in Sudan
The movement failed and Kony, a former Catholic altar boy who is now aged around 50 and says he wants to rule Uganda according to the 10 Commandments, emerged to reshape the movement. His modus operandi was to seize young people and children and force them to fight, while committing atrocities of murder and gratuitous physical mutilation. His actions have caused as many as 300,000 people to flee their homes.
Forced to withdraw from Uganda as Museveni came after him, he then unleashed his terror on the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and southern Sudan.
Issuing a warrant against him in 2005, the ICC in The Hague said Kony was responsible for 12 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, sexual enslavement, rape and inflicting serious bodily injury and suffering.
They also levelled 21 counts of war crimes, including murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape and forced enlistment of children.
But despite the fact that Kony holds the top spot on the ICC?s most-wanted list he remains an obscure figure to most people. This is what the campaigners have vowed to change, making him as well known to ordinary people as Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein or Manuel Noriega. They have targeted 20 celebrity opinion-formers, including George Clooney and Rihanna, and 12 US policy-makers for supporters to lobby.
This determination to use all means, up to and includ- ing emotionally charged moral blackmail, to get their issue to the top of the agenda is reminiscent of Bob Geldof?s tactics in Live Aid or Gerry and Kate McCann?s campaign to get all of Europe searching for their daughter.
The group?s approach has been welcomed by Save The Children, which has a long-standing presence in Uganda.
?Anything which continues to pressurise world leaders to bring Joseph Kony to justice is to be welcomed,? says Brendan Cox, the charity?s director of policy. ?
Joseph Kony?s crimes against children are well documented: murder, recruitment of children as soldiers, mutilation and rape. This viral film shows that even though Joseph Kony is in hiding his crimes will not be forgotten.? In particular Cox praises the campaign?s adept use of the ?viral? phenomenon.
?Technology and social networks can spread a message far and wide in a very short space of time. This is transforming campaigning and has huge and exciting potential to make a difference for children. Obviously the challenge for all online and viral campaigns is to translate online activity into real impact on the ground,? he says.
However one Africa specialist counselled caution this week. ?Kony is a grotesque war criminal, to be sure,? says Michael Deibert, author of Democratic Republic Of Congo: Between Hope And Despair. ?But the Ugandan government also came to power through the use of child soldiers and fought alongside militias employing child soldiers in the DRC ? something of which Invisible Children seems to be ignorant.
?The problem with Invisible Children?s whitewashing of the role of the government of Yoweri Museveni in the violence of Central Africa is that it gives Museveni and company a free pass and added ammunition with which to bludgeon virtually any domestic opposition.
"By blindly supporting Uganda?s current government and its military adventures beyond its borders, as Invisible Children suggests that people do, it is in fact guaranteeing that there will be more violence, not less, in Central Africa.?
terminator salvation terminator salvation jarhead montrose ronnie montrose marshawn lynch earthquake bay area
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.