Some Canadian experts are defending a controversial viral video campaign that has garnered more than 40 million views targeting a Ugandan warlord.
With a single tweet, San Francisco-based NGO Invisible Children launched its "Kony 2012" campaign, which seeks the capture of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, to the top of the Twitterverse.
However, the campaign has quickly turned from widespread support on social media sites to growing criticism about the group and its tactics.
According to Invisible Children, its campaign seeks to make Kony "famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. In this case, notoriety translates to public support."
In 2005, the International Criminal Court, of which Canada is a signatory, issued an arrest warrant for Kony and three other suspected war criminals. The court charged Kony with 12 counts of crimes against humanity including sexual enslavement and rape, and 21 counts of war crimes including murder, attacking civilians and forcing children to fight. The LRA has been forced out of Uganda and now operates in southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.
"If people know about the crimes that Kony has been committing for 26 years, they will unite to stop him," Invisible Children said on its website.
The campaign, which features a 30-minute documentary, also encourages supporters to contact celebrities and 12 world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about the campaign to spark action.
While Kony 2012 has supporters, it also has its detractors who say the campaign oversimplifies the issue and may incite people to take the law into their own hands.
Ugandan blogger Javie Ssozi tweeted Thursday that "the #KONY2012 approach is wrong approach because what does awareness of Kony specifically do? Leads to peace or accelerate war?"
John Thompson of the Mackenzie Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with issues related to terrorism, warfare and political instability, said the video campaign reflects an "ancient" form of counterinsurgency that has been effective in previous wars.
"It's normal. I know, somehow, in some aspects of our society, the imaginary ideal is that all problems can be solved by legal means and somehow (that's) an optimal solution to a local conflict," he said. "Somehow, like chivalry in medieval Europe, that's the ideal, but the reality is very different."
"It's a war . . . . This isn't going after some group in Idaho. This is guerrilla war; targeting one of the leaders who is propagating the whole thing," Thompson said.
"Over the years, especially with some of these wars that drag on forever, there's two approaches to counterinsurgency: work from the bottom up or top down and go after the leaders," he explained.
Thompson said it's believed that in some civil wars in the developing world, "if you can knock off a leader, especially a cult-like leader (like the LRA), it can cause a larger group to fragment and disintegrate."
"If you've tried other resources, so be it. Go for it," he added. "In World War II, would you have passed up a shot with Hitler?"
On whether the campaign may encourage unlawful actions to detain Kony, Thompson said given the atrocities Kony is accused of committing, "vigilanteeism, where you're encouraging local people to go after leaders during a time of war, how's it going to worsen the situation?"
Prof. Joanna Quinn, director of Western University's Africa Institute in London, Ont., says the campaign is correct in singling out Kony.
"This guy is an indicted war criminal by the International Criminal Court, so it's not like he has not been called out in the past. His crimes are documented and they've been investigated."
"If what they're talking about is finally carrying out the arrest warrant and capturing Joseph Kony, then I don't disagree," she said. "Going after Kony is not a bad thing."
Quinn said Invisible Children may "simplify" the war or "misrepresent things to take a certain stand" in the video. But she said the group is highlighting an important fact: the international community has "not bothered to arrest (Kony)" despite committing to do so.
"That this conflict has been allowed to fester since the 1980s speaks volumes to me, to the fact that nobody has paid attention," Quinn said.
Meanwhile, Sidneyeve Matrix, a media professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., said the video is encouraging her students to delve deeper than the single tweet.
"To have that kind of sustained engagement I'm seeing . . . I don't see the dangers, I just see the possibility and potential. The campaign is doing part of the work, but it's people and community that's doing the rest of it," she said.
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