Profile: Joseph Kony

 

A former Catholic altar boy from northern Uganda, Joseph Kony has waged war against the government of President Yoweri Museveni for almost two decades.

His Lord's Resistance Army movement has been demanding that Uganda be ruled according to the Biblical 10 Commandments.

Wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Kony has failed to sign a peace deal with Uganda's government, seeking assurances that he and his allies will not be prosecuted.

But after more than two years of delicate peace negotiations, regional governments appear to have lost patience with Mr Kony, mounting a new attack on LRA bases in eastern DR Congo.

Born in the early 1960s in Odek, a village east of Gulu, Mr Kony is remembered as an amiable boy.

"He played football and was a brilliant dancer," one of his former classmates said, recalling the rebel leader's days at Odek primary.

He is thought to be the cousin of Alice Lakwena, a former prostitute who formed the Holy Spirit Movement in 1986.

 

This group represented the Acholi people who felt excluded from power after the overthrow of the northern leader, Milton Obote, by Mr Museveni.

Ms Lakwena promised her followers immunity from the bullets of the Ugandan army, but Mr Museveni's troops defeated her movement in 1988 and she fled to Kenya.

Spirit medium

After this defeat, Mr Kony founded his own rebel group which over the next 19 years went on to abduct thousands of children to become fighters or sex slaves.

Mr Kony himself is thought to have at least 60 wives, as he and his senior commanders take the pick of the girls they capture.

He sees himself as a spirit medium.

Young abductees, who have escaped from the LRA, say that Mr Kony would tell them he got his instructions from the Holy Spirit and would often preach in tongues.

"I will communicate with Museveni through the holy spirits and not through the telephone," he once said.

He has created an aura of fear and mysticism around himself and his rebels follow strict rules and rituals.

"When you go to fight you make the sign of the cross first. If you fail to do this, you will be killed," one young fighter who escaped from the LRA told Human Rights Watch.

"You must also take oil and draw a cross on your chest, your forehead, and each shoulder, and you must make a cross in oil on your gun. They say that the oil is the power of the Holy Spirit."

Mr Kony appears to believe that his role is to cleanse the Acholi people.

He uses biblical references to explain why it is necessary to kill his own people, since they have - in his view - failed to support his cause.

"If the Acholi don't support us, they must be finished," he told one abductee.

Anti-Joseph Kony resolution introduced in House

Thanks, in part, to the viral sensation video “Kony 12” created by Invisible Children, Inc., Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony is back in the news. The 30-minute video, the contents and spirit of which has been subject to debate, aims to draw awareness to Kony’s offenses and has been watched nearly 100 million times on either YouTube or Vimeo.

It must be working, as Reps. Jim McGovern and Ed Royce introduced on Tuesday a resolution “spotlighting the atrocities of Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army and supporting U.S. efforts to counter the LRA,” according to a release.

“There is increased attention on the terror inflicted upon innocent people by the LRA – and that’s a good thing. I am hopeful that we can use this momentum as a force for change,” said McGovern, who co-chairs the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission. “We must do all that we can to protect innocent civilians — especially children — and end LRA violence once and for all. We made important strides with our legislation in the last Congress, but our work must continue.”

“Last week, an unprecedented Internet campaign brought the attention of tens of millions of Americans to the atrocities the LRA is committing,” said Royce, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This resolution builds on past legislation and the current campaign by giving an added focus to these atrocities on children and efforts to stop them.”

 

Royce and McGovern have long been on Kony’s case, having introduced the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in the House last Congress. The legislation, which was enacted into law, made it U.S. policy “to apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield.”

Among other things, the new resolution, H.Res. 583, “condemns the LRA’s atrocities and welcomes the steps taken to date” and “calls for stepped-up efforts to expand the number of regional forces deployed to protect civilians and pursue LRA commanders, while increasing cross-border coordination among regional governments.”

 

The resolution comes a day after remarks made by Sen. Patrick Leahy at Champlain College.

“No one should be so naïve as to think that a 30-minute video, or even capturing Joseph Kony and disarming the LRA, will end the violence in central Africa. It will not. There are many factors that contributed to the LRA, the genocide in Rwanda, the mass rapes and killings in the Congo, and human rights violations by government forces in those countries.But neither should we watch idly as these crimes occur, just because they are half a world away.We can all work to help victims of war rebuild their lives, we can all work to bring the perpetrators of atrocities to justice, we can all work to help make the world a better place.”

Kony Campaign: How Can We Turn Awareness Into Action?

In the span of just a few days, Invisible Children’s #Kony2012 campaign has generated an avalanche of attention on Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony.

The world should know who Kony is. But Kony is but one fugitive from justice among many, operating in a region faced with systemic human rights challenges requiring effective and transformative action.

Awareness is an important first step. But we need to stop all the Konys of the world.

For more than two decades, Amnesty International has documented crimes committed by the Lord’s Resistance Army and their horrific impact on the lives of thousands of civilians in Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda.

But impunity doesn’t stop there.  Amnesty has documented grave abuses not only in Africa, but also in Syria, Burma (Myanmar), and Sri Lanka, and we’ve called on the international community to hold accountable leaders of governments and armed groups alike who are responsible for those abuses.

 

How can we pool our efforts to stop those responsible for the world’s worst crimes?  How can we make sure weapons don’t end up in the hands of other Konys?  How can we work with local communities to ensure justice is served?

Join us for an online chat on Tuesday, March 13 from 1-2pm ET / 10-11am PT with our experts Adotei Akwei, Director of Government Relations and International Advocacy, and Scott Edwards, Director of the Tactical Response Unit.