KONY 2012: GOOD INTENTIONS OR SCAM?

Before opening this blog, I was thinking about what I could write, how it should be. I confess that I have too many interests, but I felt insecure. I do not know if I am prepared to write about global problems such as the Arab Spring, because I am not there; I keep informed thanks to activists, bloggers or correspondents from these countries. But then I thought:  what about journalists who do not live in an Arab country, for example, and write articles related to this type of issues?  They use their own sources and achieve great results. Well, maybe one day I will be able to do the same. Until this happens, I will try to find my way in the fourth power.

One of the issues that have caught my attention during the last month is KONY 2012. It is a film and campaign by Invisible Children (an NGO) that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, with the goal of stopping all the crimes that he is committing. But, who is Joseph Kony and who makes him “famous” through this campaign?

All of the answers are in his video. Kony is the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan guerrilla group. He has been kidnapping and killing children since twenty years ago and nobody have done something. With this video, Invisible Children wants the world to know who is Joseph Kony with the goal of fighting against them because, as the video says: “Nothing is more powerful than an idea”

The creator of this film is Jason Russell, one of the main leaders of “Invisible Children”. He is a man from the United States who states to be horrified when he met a child called Jacob, a victim of Kony’s group. Due to it, he decided to make the world aware of the situation. Jason Russell encourages us in the video to plaster the streets the night of April 20^th with photographs and information about Joseph Kony in order to inform all of the population.

Fighting for a common cause, ending with a dangerous and cruel terrorist… Well, a world in which a project like this succeeds is a world worth living in, but it is not as wonderful as it seems. Nowadays, political interests are behind everything. In the last two weeks, the campaign has received too many critics which declare that the video oversimplifies the conflict. People has put on Youtube other videos trying to explain why Kony 2012 is a scam with the unique goal of promoting war and collecting money in order to send USA’s troops to Uganda . And what will they achieve with this? The answer is simple: barrels of oil valued in billions of dollars. The access of these soldiers would allow the access to these sources of oil.  The majority part of the benefits that came from this campaign, are used in people awareness instead of helping to Africa.

Besides, it is known that Joseph Kony, although he had born in Uganda (1961) now he is hiding out of this country. So that, it does not make sense that the United States send their troops there. Uganda’s Government is against this campaign, as the prime minister of Uganda declares in this video:

And one of the most important facts: nobody really knows if Joseph Kony continues alive so, how can a NGO start a campaign to punish a man who maybe is death? There are a lot of gaps in this question which only can be solved by the own organization.

This situation has driven Jason Russell crazy. Thursday morning, the co-founder of Invisible Children has been arrested in San Diego for getting drunk, vandalizing cars and masturbating in public. His family has justified these acts with the pressure that he is suffering because of the critics that the campaign is receiving.

KONY 2012 has opened a discussion between good intentions and scam campaigns with war purposes. After knowing all of this information, we should ask ourselves the following question: What are the real objectives of KONY 2012?