*.*Invisible Children*.*
So, I know I haven’t blogged in what seems like forever, ok, it really was forever, but I’ve watched the DVD “Invisible Children” twice now, and I feel like I am ready to document to the world (I know that I’m being very optimistic) what lies there within, and how much it appalls me.
Even as we speak there is a war waging on. As we drive our fancy cars and complain that we don’t have the most up to date cell phone, children are being abducted and desensitized by violence to become killing machines. This war is not in the Middle East, this war does not even directly effect America, but America has everything to do with it.
This civil war is in Uganda, and it has been going on for twenty years without cease, and has affected the lives of millions of Ugandans as well as Southern Sudanese. This war is a revolution. Revolutionary vs. Government, with the people of Uganda caught in the deadly crossfire, literally.
The war began in 1986 with the overthrowing of the Ugandan President by the National Resistance Army. This period marked a time of increasing turmoil in Uganda, with counterinsurgency groups performing violent acts left and right. By the end of that year popular insurgency had developed in the Northern regions which were occupied by the government.
Joseph Kony enters the picture in January 1987 and claims to be a spirit medium. Kony, after creating an army with this followers called the Lord’s Resistance Army, is encouraged by a former commander of the People’s Democratic Army to employ guerrilla tactics, specifically attacks on civilians, to underline the government’s inability to protect its people.
The Acholi , a tribe in Northern Uganda, supported Kony at the beginning, looking upon him as the answer to their plea for peace in Uganda. However, when the Ugandan government employed “heavy hand” tactics, in order to try to extinguish Kony. He and the LRA lashed out by mutilating numerous Acholi whom they believed to be government supporters. It was this brutal violence towards their people that turned the Acholi away from the insurgency.
By 1994, Kony had moved to Sudan seeking support for his revolutionary movement. He became convinced that the Acholi were lending aid to the new government and that was when the LRA began targeting civilians. It was in 1994 that the first mass abduction of children took place. The most famous being the Aboke abductions of 139 female students in October of 1996.
But millions of others have been abducted; Millions of others that you will never hear about. That is what Invisible Children is about, about putting a face on these children.
Once abducted, the children are turned into soldiers for the LRA. It is crucial, in order to comprehend the conflict in Uganda, to understand that the children who are abducted are the ones causing the initial conflict. The children are the victims and the perpetrators of these vicious acts of violence.
The children, in order to escape being abducted, walk, in fear, sometimes miles, to towns in order to sleep together and escape abduction. They are called the “Night Commuters”. These children sleep together in bus depots, in hospitals, literally anywhere, where they can be safe from the rebels whom they have seen take friends and family.
It seems impossible that this war in Uganda could really be happening. How can America sit by and watch as Ugandan children are being taken from their homes and brainwashed to the point that they will kill anyone, even family or friends. The film makers of Invisible Children say, “We are the youth of America, when we do something, people listen.” And it is true.
We need to act up, and tell people that what we want to do is help these people in Northern Uganda take back their lives. And most of all help these children become children again. We need to do all we can to give these children a chance to be able to honestly be a child. Kony himself said when speaking to a reporter at the United Nations, “I do not have any children, I have only combatants.” He has demoralized these children to such an extent that they are no longer children!
It’s time to say that enough is enough!
DISPLACE ME!
~kikki
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