As she maneuvered the city streets of Kampala, Uganda, Nina Keehan passed billboard after billboard plastered with images of Yoweri Museveni, the country’s president who is widely suspected of rigging elections to maintain a now 26-year rule.

Propaganda, she said, is one factor that has removed Ugandans from the political process in a country where Keehan witnessed the public health crisis, infrequent access to electricity in slums and the widely varying economic strata firsthand.

‘People just don’t care to vote,’ said Keehan, a junior magazine journalism major who studied abroad in the country. ‘They don’t have a voice when it comes to the government. They feel neglected and that’s a terrible, helpless feeling, I would assume.’

When she watched ‘Kony 2012,’ a viral video calling for the capture of Joseph Kony, the leader of an opposition group originally developed in response to Museveni’s rule, Keehan wished she was back in Uganda to witness the response. Kony is wanted by the International Criminal Court for murder, abduction, sexual mutilation and abducting civilians, including children, to serve as fighters and sex slaves for the Lord’s Resistance Army in attacks against the Ugandan army and civilians.

The video is part of advocacy organization Invisible Children’s call for Kony’s capture by the year’s end. Supporters have taken to social media in support of Kony 2012, but the campaign has also received its share of criticism since the video, which has received more than 85.2 million YouTube views, rocketed the campaign to notoriety in early March.

Museveni’s brute-force military hold on the country is an issue far greater than the LRA’s current 100- to 200-person militaristic operation, said Horace Campbell, professor of African-American studies and political science at Syracuse University. Campbell co-hosted a forum discussing Kony 2012 on Monday.

Campbell said the video’s inattention to Museveni’s reign – which continues to suppress the Acholi people in Northern Ugandan concentration camps – was one of the half-hour video’s downfalls.

‘I felt very sad because of the level of ignorance and that it was a clear attempt to manipulate young people in the United States and to give them partial information about what is going on in Uganda,’ he said.

The LRA has also since moved out of Uganda and into other Central African countries, which Campbell said was poorly portrayed in the video. Kony signed a Ugandan peace deal in 2006, according to an Oct. 14, 2011, Los Angeles Times article.

Though Keehan said the LRA’s exit from the country could have been more clearly presented, the aftermath of Kony’s previous grip on the North has lasted in both the memory of his influence and the physical disfiguration and scarring of those affected by the militant leader.

‘People want to live healthy, prosperous lives in the end. And Kony made that impossible for them,’ Keehan said. ‘All people want the same things really. To hear them talk about the fact that it was brutally stolen from them was really horrible.’

Keehan spent most of her time abroad in a more suburban area of Uganda, but she traveled throughout the country, including to Gulu, a city center in Northern Uganda where Kony’s terror was most felt.

Lisa Dougan, director of field outreach at Resolve, a Washington D.C.-based organization that works on forming political solutions to bring an end to the LRA, said criticisms directed at Invisible Children have largely been misunderstandings. Resolve worked closely with the organization to pass the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009/ Resolve also helped with the most recent campaign, though it was not directly involved with the making of the viral video.

Most of the criticism Resolve received has been focused on Invisible Children or the organization itself, she said. Dougan agreed the video didn’t clearly represent that the LRA is no longer in Uganda or delve into the country’s leadership.

Resolve works to quell the LRA through actions such as letter writing, calling and local lobbying campaigns, she said. Dougan said Resolve is waiting to confirm an April meeting with New York Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle in Syracuse regarding the issue.

‘We hope all of the conversation and chatter of Kony 2012 gets redirected to the people that are suffering,’ Dougan said.

After Angie Kwon, a senior education major, was immediately touched by a documentary produced by Invisible Children last semester, she invited the organization to the SU campus for a viewing. She said she sees the organization as an opportunity to raise awareness.

‘It would never happen in the United States, and it’s not fair that, just because these children live in Africa, that they have to live this way,’ Kwon said.

Invisible Children has done work on the ground in Uganda as well. Luke Lanciano, former president of Syracuse STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, called the organization’s early warning radio system and LRA crisis tracker ‘terrific tools’ for civilians and those documenting the LRA’s crimes, though he said there were issues with the way Invisible Children oversimplified the conflict.

‘Their films are really just trying to rope in people who know nothing about the LRA conflict with the hope that broad awareness will be politically helpful,’ he said in an email.

Keehan, Campbell and Derek Ford, an SU graduate student and member of the Syracuse Party for Socialism and Liberation, took issue with the video’s intended solution to the conflict with the LRA.

President Barack Obama deployed about 100 troops in October last year to assist African forces in combating the LRA. The Kony 2012 video highlighted the moment as a victory, showing Invisible Children staff members celebrating the news.

Ford is wary about providing support for a Ugandan army known for suppressing the Acholi people in concentration camps for the country’s government. Speaking generally, Ford also cautioned that entering humanitarian conflict can be a ‘guise’ for more imperialist interests that might be at stake.

Ford said he doesn’t doubt the intentions of those who applaud Kony 2012’s work, but he stressed the need for more context in the video.

‘I know a lot of people who have ‘fallen’ for Kony 2012 have a genuine concern for African children, but that concern is misplaced,’ he said.

But Kwon, the senior education major who invited Invisible Children to campus, said she believes the video can be used as a starting point for something greater.

‘It’s enough of a catalyst to get people who want to know more to do more. It shouldn’t be the end all be all of everyone’s research. It’s a start.’

Campbell, the SU professor, emphasized that Americans do not approach the situation in Africa as a ‘savior’ – which implies hierarchy. Those interested in offering help must develop an understanding of the conditions, exploitation and plunder in the country and not ‘support those that are plundering.’ Ugandans threw stones at a showing of the video attended by more than 5,000 in the country, according to a March 15 Washington Post article.

Keehan also agreed with this point, adding that she felt the video and campaign are targeted at wealthy Americans who ‘want to feel good by buying a bracelet.’ To create a working solution to issues facing Ugandans, Keehan said it’s vital to incorporate them into the problem-solving process.

Said Keehan: ‘They’re not going to feel involved in this process because it’s really not theirs.’

dbtruong@syr.edu 

Published on March 26, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Debbie: dbtruong@syr.edu | @debbietruong