DATELINE: UGANDA – CENTRAL AFRICA: A school dropout described as a "gentle boy" by classmates, has become one of the most sadistic and murderous leaders in Africa. His name is Joseph Kony. He is 50 years of age. He is a living plague on the innocent peoples of Uganda and neighboring countries.
Joseph Kony born 1961, is the head of the Lord's Resistance Army, often referred to as the LRA, a guerrilla group that is engaged in a violent campaign to establish a theocratic government in Uganda, which Kony claims is a mission of purification based on the Ten Commandments.
His early childhood and teen years reveal much about the man and his violent temperament. Kony was born in Odek, a village east of Gulu in northern Uganda. He was the son of farmers. He was friendly to his siblings, but he was known for being harsh and aggressive with anyone who crossed him, particularly with his siblings.
During his teenage years, Joseph Kony apprenticed as the village “witch doctor” under the tutelage of his older brother, and when his older brother died, he took over full responsibility for continuing in his brothers role as the village witch doctor.
When confronted, he often resorted to fists and violence rather than communication. He was teased in school about his size and the teachers gave him a hard time because he didn't seem too bright. His father was a lay apostle of the Catholic Church and his mother was an Anglican. Kony served as an altar boy for several years. He stopped attending church at about the age of 15 and shortly after dropped out of high-school.
Kony first came to prominence in January 1986, in his mid 20s. His group was one of many premillennialist groups that sprang up in Acholiland in the wake of the wildly popular Holy Spirit Movement introduced to the peoples of central Africa by Alice Auma (aka Lakwena).
Originally, Kony's group was first known as the United Holy Salvation Army (UHSA) and was not considered to be a threat to civil order. By 1988, amid internal tribal tensions and various factions clashing with the government of Uganda, Kony’s group began to supplement its remnant troops through forced recruitment of children as young as 12 and 13 years old and the United Holy Salvation Army became a formidable resistance army, in opposition to the government of Uganda.
In time, the bulk of his foot soldiers were children. He is estimated to have taken 104,000 or more boys and girls since the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) started fighting in 1986. Kony often kills entire families and neighbors when abducting the children forcibly recruited to fight for him.
Many international efforts at peace and an end to the abduction of children by Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army have been attempted between 1996 and 2001. All of them failed to end the abductions, rapes, child soldiers, and civilian casualties including attacks on refugee camps. After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Kony’s Lord's Resistance Army was declared a terrorist group and Joseph Kony a terrorist.
The Lord's Resistance Army is one of the larger terrorist organizations in the world and operates without fear of outside interference. It has killed more people than many other violent groups, yet few Westerners have ever heard of it, since nearly all its violence is perpetrated in the border region between Uganda and Sudan in East Africa.
Joseph Kony considers himself to be quite a good Christian, and he wants Uganda to be a Christian nation. His primary strategy to bring this about, is the Lord's Resistance Army, and the LRA has been at civil war against the Ugandan government for the past 24 years. If the LRA wins its struggle against the Ugandan government forces, Kony has promised that Uganda will become a “theocracy” with laws based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.
Kony's LRA has kidnapped more than 100,000 children over the years for use as fighters and sex slaves. As part of their initiation, these children are often required to kill their own parents. One of heinous and horrific methods of executing the mothers is to blind fold their sons, forcing them to insert the barrel of an AK-47 into the vagina of their mother and pull the trigger. The boys do not know what they are doing until the blind folds are removed and they see with their young eyes the horrifying carnage done to their mother. Children are commanded to kill in order to stay alive. (It's not clear which of the Ten Commandments this aspect of Kony's strategy is based on.)
Children are used as pack mules, carrying LRA supplies until they are too weak to walk, at which time they're killed or simply left to die in the bush and hot sun. Kidnapped boys also serve as targets and decoys, sent to the front lines... unarmed... whenever the Ugandan Army engages the LRA. Kidnapped girls that Kony or his senior commanders find attractive become their "wives" (Kony is reputed to have more than 60). If children do escape, they are never the same again. Troublesome captives have their noses, lips, and/or ears cut off, and are then made to eat their own flesh.
Kony has some strange ideas about religion and God. He uses passages from the Pentateuch to justify mutilation and murder. He promotes a demonic spirituality crafted from an eclectic mix of Christianity, Islam, and African witchcraft. He says he gets strategic advice from a multinational host of spirits, including a Chinese phantom. He says there are eight angels who regularly speak to him... three American, two Sudanese, two Chinese, and one Congolese. He sees himself as self-styled messiah and prophet.
Today, no one thinks Kony and his movement represents a loving God and the ideals and principles of Christianity. Isn’t it clear? Kony is a sadistic killer. Everything he has done is about demonic control of children, boys and girls, young men and women, doing the bidding of a deranged and evil man. Many of the leaders in his army were abducted 10 or 12 years ago, and have known nothing but death, savagery and destruction.
The world does nothing to stop this man’s carnage. Kony’s LRA has created another holocaust—one so horrifying that U.N. officials call it... "one of the worst human rights crises of the past century."
The perpetrators commit atrocities with such malevolence that even the most irreligious people familiar with the LRA's acts describe them as "unrestrained evil." The targets of the butchery are innocent children. They rape, mutilate, and kill them with a rapaciousness that staggers the imagination. Worse, as noted in this report, they compel children to kill one another and their own families, fighting as "soldiers" in an armed force deliberately composed of children.
Perhaps the greatest atrocity is teaching these children that they spread this carnage by the power of the Holy Spirit to purify the "unrepentant," twisting Christianity into a religion of sadism and horror to their victims. It is spiritual warfare at its very worst, and it could not be more satanic.
NO POLITICAL SOLUTION IN SIGHT
Does no one care about what's happening in Uganda? Consider the FACTS and you decide.
FACT: The LRA rebellion has become a political quagmire. Although the LRA claims to be fighting for Ugandan transformation to a theocratic government, the LRA has no political platform or clear objectives upon which to base negotiations for a peaceful settlement to the horror. Nevertheless, the Ugandan government and concerned intermediaries continue to attempt negotiations.
FACT: Even while LRA terrorism directed against children has intensified, the U.S. government has not made the conflict a high priority. Many believe that without U.S. involvement, the abductions, killing, and maiming will continue.
FACT: In August 2004, the U.S. government enacted the Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act, which essentially calls LRA terrorism a great tragedy, offers limited support for a negotiated solution, and warns Sudan not to support the LRA.
FACT: The previous Bush administration placed the LRA on tier-two of its Terrorist Exclusion List, which means the LRA is judged not to be a threat to U.S. interests.
FACT: Several congressmen have visited northern Uganda to witness the devastation firsthand, while sympathetic, they see no end in sight. Former Sen. Russ Feingold, from Wisconsin said... "I will remain committed to stopping the horror that has stolen the innocence of so many Ugandan children."
FACT: The Obama Administration has done nothing. There is no significant leadership to move the issue to the point where congressional hearings can be held to review the severity of the issues. Hearings is the first step in focusing the U.S. government on bringing about a strategy and solution.
WILL KONY AND THE LRA BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE?
FACT: In an effort to save children by ending the conflict in any way possible, the Ugandan government passed an Amnesty Act in 1999, which shields from prosecution any LRA fighter who surrenders to the government. The act also offers surrendered fighters $150 in "starting over" money. Terms of the act extend to Kony and his top commanders.
FACT: The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Kony and his top four commanders on October 13, 2005 but all attempts to serve the warrants as a means to mediate the conflict have repeatedly broken down. In reality, there is irrefutable evidence that the fighting has become more savage and sadistic in the past 5 years.
FACT: Western and European governments, the World Court, the United Nations, and most all governmental agencies have either given only lip-service to the carnage or chosen to ignore the problems of the LRA entirely.
FACT: Kids in Uganda—kids just like yours—are taken every night and enslaved, raped, mutilated, murdered. You can make a difference. Talk to your government. Help bring an end to Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Liberation Army.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
The people most familiar with LRA terrorism agree that the best hope for ending the carnage is putting it on the radar screen of the Western world.
Ordinary Christians can help stop LRA terrorism. Presenting the issue to churches, continuing in intercessory prayer over the conflict, donating to Christian agencies that work with Ugandan children, and pressing U.S. government officials for action all work to save LRA victims.
Here are key Christian and charitable organizations that work with the victims of the LRA conflict in northern Uganda.
Far Reaching Ministries
951-677-4474
World Vision
888-511-6548
Save the Children
800-SAVETHECHILDREN
Oxfam
800-77-OXFAM
Jesuit Refugee Service
202-462-0400
Write your local congressman: www.house.gov/writerep
