So, lots of things have been going around facebook about the KONY 2012 video. I'll be honest... I haven't seen the Kony video. But, I know what's going and I've seen two other full length documentaries about the situation, but more focused on the kids.
I have a unique position in that one of my classes this semester is "Children and Political Violence." Because of my connection to the military, I was thinking that it would be more towards kids of military members and how it has affected them. We discussed this a bit, as well as all American kids, especially in respect to 9/11. But, most of what we've discussed is children in war zone, both civilian and child soliders.
If you haven't heard of "child soldiers" before, now is the time to be educated. They haven't been and aren't just around for the Lord's Resistance Army lead by Joseph Kony. My class has talked about many other conflicts where they have been used. Falling Whistles is an organization we learned about, started because of the children in the Democratic Repbulic of Congo in Africa. They took kids young and old to use as soliders. The smallest, they would send out to fight with a whistle. The kids would blow the whistle and their enemies would fire at them - killing the children and exposing their position. Then, an older group of kids who could fire guns would be sent out, to fire at those that gave their positions away. The organization is called Falling Whistles, because of how the children would fall as they died.
I have now seen two documentaries about the conflict in Uganda. This past summer, I saw the video Tony that focuses around a specific boy they met while making the Invisible Children video. Yesterday, in my Children and Political Violence class, we watched the first Invisible Children video.
Now, I ask:
What do YOU know about child soldiers and what is happening in Uganda? And what are your thoughts about it?
Briefly what I know is that these children are abducted and forced to kill or be killed. They are desensitized by being shown murders of other children. As seen in the Invisible Children video, some kids would rather die than live in fear of being abducted. Many children are "night commuters" and travel to the city to sleep in the hospital or outside, packed in like sardines, because it's harder for them to be abducted there than in their huts far from the city.
If you don't know what's happening in the world, now is the time to learn.
