From the beginning of this year there is a ‘hype’ that is called ‘Kony 2012’. Kony 2012 is a campaign in order to arrest the world’s worst war criminal who is operating in Uganda for 26 years now.
Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) guerilla group, is turning little girls into sex slaves and boys into child soldiers. The most intolerable is that he forces the children to kill their own parents.
Unfortunately, until just a few years ago, the rest of the world did not notice this terrible happening. That is why these children are called ‘the invisible children’. These children were not seen by anyone in the world and that is why nobody could care about them.
In 2005, by means of demonstrations and talking to powerful people like politicians, the US government faced the crimes. They did send the US forces to arrest Joseph Kony but this turned out not to be successful because he had a new hiding place.
The Hollywood like film about Kony has been a viral success from the first moment, dominating social media worldwide and having one of the fastest ever take-offs on YouTube. The hashtag #stopkony has had hundreds of thousands of tweets, and millions of people now know something about Uganda and what is happening to children there.
Hopefully, Kony 2012 is the campaign that will get Kony arrested. With the help of social media, not only the rich and powerful people have power, but it’s the crowd that is hopefully going to put the horrible crimes to an end.
Besides the movie, also other ways are deployed to make Kony famous. For example, a list of culture makers and policy makers are approached via Twitter to speak about Kony. Next to this there is a large poster campaign and people can buy t-shirts, bracelets and other items at the website. Plus, everyone can donate small amounts of money to make the campaign possible.
With the power of the crowd, Joseph Kony is turning famous, and is becoming world news. With all the support that is raised, people will unite to stop Kony and he will hopefully get arrested soon. Next to this, the aim of the campaign is to make Kony a visible, concrete example of international justice. This so that other war criminals know that their crimes will not go unnoticed and unpunished.
It is amazing how many people around the whole world have responded to this campaign (almost 70 million views on YouTube!). When Joseph Kony gets arrested, this is a victory that will be celebrated in the whole wide world!
In case you haven’t seen it yet or you want to watch the impressive documentary again:
And please share!