It’s been more than a year since the video “KONY 2012″ went viral on the Internet and brought slacktivism into the public spotlight, but the group missed its goal of bringing murderous African warlord Joseph Kony to justice by the end of last year.
Perhaps overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the campaign, San Diego-based organization Invisible Children had stumbled in the months after it launched. It struggled to address questions about its funding and expenses and then co-founder Jason Russell had a well-publicized breakdown. But the group is back on mission, with a fresh video and a renewed effort to shine a spotlight on the jungles of the Congo, where Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, is believed to be hiding.
“We believe that last year was a monumental success. The goal of the film was to make the crimes of Joseph Kony and the LRA known on a mass scale,” Noelle West, a spokeswoman for Invisible Children, told FoxNews.com. “The international institutions that should be responsible for implementing initiatives that could bring an end to this conflict have not felt enough pressure to provide the necessary resources to do so.”
“We wanted to create that overwhelming pressure, and the KONY 2012 campaign was extremely successful at doing just that.”
Despite the failure to see Kony brought to justice, the group claims to have succeeded on several fronts:
- More high-ranking members have left the LRA in 2012 than the previous three years combined, and lower-level fighters have defected in record numbers.
- Killings attributed to the LRA dropped by 67 percent from 2011 to 2012.
- Two high-ranking commanders of the LRA, Maj. Gen. Ceasar Acellam and Lt. Col. Vincent Binansio “Binani” Okumu, have been caught.
- In January, the U.S. Congress passed the bipartisan “Rewards for Justice” bill, which was signed into law by President Obama and effectively placed a bounty of up to $5 million on Kony’s head. President Obama also recommitted American Special Forces and authorized more resources to help go after Kony last April.
And, Invisible Children claims, Kony is feeling the heat. As a result of the campaign launched against him, the warlord has gone into hiding in the jungles of Central Africa.
“Evidence suggests that Kony is in the border region of Sudan and CAR. Invisible Children donors have been funding the creation and expansion of HF radio networks across the conflict region for the last two years,” West said, adding that Invisible Children has been funding the creation and expansion of HF radio towers across the conflict region for the last two years, which are used to provide early warning to remote communities and record LRA activities and in turn, locate Kony.
Joseph Kony is one of the most notorious guerrilla leaders in the world. He’s been accused by government entities of abducting children to become sex slaves and soldiers. It is estimated that he recruited 66,000 children to become soldiers in the cult-like LRA. Kony was indicted for crimes against humanity in 2005 by the International Criminal Court located in the Hague.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News