Westbound on The 504...

Meet Kony: He's a Ugandan warlord and he's about to be famous

Hmm…Suddenly this story, the story of Joseph Kony has become the flavour of the week. This is just one of many articles online today chronicling the story and the meteoric social media phenomena of the Invisible Children film that was released earlier this week.

This article in particular uses the word famous. He is not famous. Many did not know anything about him until this week. I guess my problem is that use of the would famous denotes some positivity; or implies we should want to know this person. Fame/famous does not speak to someone who is abhorent or vicious.

Until approximately a year and a half ago, for me personally, the story of Kony and the LRA were vague news stories that I remember hearing about in the few minutes of world news that I heard on TV a few years back. And I consider myself well read, I keep up with my local, national, and international news…I thought. Then I met someone who introduced me to an organzation, Kirabo Canada, that was focused on helping the children that have been left behind, suffered the in the aftermath of the LRA in Northern Uganda. I have since learned a lot more about Kony.

Kony is not famous, but he should be infamous, he is in fact, a criminal - indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. He is a fugitive. He was driven out of Uganda but his LRA continues to prey on civilians, apparently now in the DRC, Sudan, and Central African Republic.

Canadians are not unfamiliar with war criminals and crises in Sub-saharan Africa. Perhaps because a Canadian, Romeo Dallaire, was leading the UN forces in Rwanda, we were very familiar with the story…long before the movie Hotel Rwanda came out. We just recently, finally pushed out Léon Mugesera, to face charges in Rwanda for his role in the genocide.

Again, I find it interesting that this has just become the flavour of the week as, nearly two years ago (May 2010) Obama wrote of the LRA, quite eloquently - “By any measure, its actions are an affront to human dignity,” And last fall, the Obama approved, (noted in my earlier posts via the BBC:  - http://tmblr.co/ZJsacxAvkppb and http://tmblr.co/ZJsacxAvjRoj ) sending troops to hunt Kony and his warlords down. He remains at large and now people are making him famous…

I guess, I am glad the story is being heard…I wish that people were focused more on the children that Invisible Children hold dear in their name. Last summer I met some of these children…well, not children, any more, growing teenagers still living with the horror show that was the LRA in Northern Uganda. Last summer I spent three weeks in Uganda, I spent time working at a school and living in a community trying to move forward from the devastation left behind by Kony and the LRA. I met former child soldiers, children who escaped and were eventually able to find tenuous safety again though some lost everything, their mothers, fathers, siblings. They lost years of their lives and lived through a horror that no one in the democratic western world will ever experience. I listened to some of their stories first hand, from their lips…

So all I can say is let’s not make Kony famous, let us see justice served. Let’s focus on the people and communities, the civilians who were brutalized; who are survivors and trying to make a better life.