Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
It has been called the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world. It has affected millions of people in central Africa for 23 years, but not if the activists of the non-profit organization Invisible Children continue their mission to end it.
The Invisible Children’s van arrived Sept. 17 at the University of Maine as part of their tour to spread awareness of the war between Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda. They came to gather support and to show their documentary videos about Ugandan child soldiers.
The activists are committed to finding a peaceful solution to the conflict as well as providing for the people after the violence ceases with education, jobs and a better life.
Stephen Besaw of Nova Scotia, an intern with Invisible Children, first heard about the mission on YouTube and applied for a position right out of high school. He is now traveling with the group to help show the organization’s popular documentaries, answer questions and sell merchandise to fund their effort.
“Here [with Invisible Children] you can get involved so quickly,” Besaw said.
Bit Kernodle of Sacramento, Ca. — another intern — showed a T-shirt at the UMaine event with a quote from President Barack Obama printed on it saying, “It is a death sentence of a society to force children to kill in wars.”
“The LRA is the dirtiest; they put the youngest children on the front lines,” Besaw said.
The documentary showed children holding machine guns dressed in T-shirts and shorts as they walked through the jungle and the crowded places where they sleep in piles without beds.
One abducted soldier shown in the documentary said he had dropped a baby into a river because the mother was causing problems, and he had shot others.
The LRA has been documented by three friends: Laren Poole, Jason Russell and Bobby Bailey, who had the same interest in film-making and decided to travel to Africa to expose the tragedies of Northern Uganda.
The mission’s biggest initiative is to ask for President Obama’s attention and to deliver petitions with signatures for the arrest warrant of Joseph Kony. By Christmas 2009, they hope Obama will address a plan to arrest Kony and announce a strategy to end the crisis. They also hope to have the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 signed into law and to secure a commitment to the recovery and rehabilitation of affected communities.
“That’s why I’m here. They give you action steps,” Kernodle said.
These new efforts are in response to a failed counter-offensive and subsequent retaliation on Dec. 24, 2008, when the LRA murdered more than 600 people in the Congo and abducted over 160 more children to continue their resistance.
“Tell 10 of your friends. Tell as many people as you can,” said Cody Snow, a third-year English student and volunteer at the Bodwell Center for Service and Volunteerism.
The event’s co-host was Brittney Ipacs, a second-year English and Secondary Education student.
Bangor Daily News