guardian.co.uk,
Julian Borger, John Vidal, and Rosebell Kagumire in Kampala, Thursday 8 March
2012
 |
| Jacob Acaye in a still from the Kony 2012 film. Photograph: Invisible Children |
Jacob
Acaye, the Ugandan former child abductee at the heart of the film Kony 2012, a
web phenomenon seen by more than 50 million people around the world, yesterday
defended the video and its makers against criticism that it is misleading and
champions western intervention against an insurgency which is already waning
and on the run.
Acaye's
home region around the town of Gulu is now relatively peaceful, and the Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA), which kidnapped him and killed his brother in 2002, has
been driven out of northern Uganda along with its warlord leader, Joseph Kony,
who has melted into the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the
Central African Republic. But Acaye denied widespread criticism in Uganda and elsewhere
that the American-made film calling for Kony's arrest is out-of-date or
irrelevant. "It is not too late, because all this fighting and suffering
is still going on elsewhere," Acaye, now 21, told the Guardian in a
telephone interview from Kampala, where he is studying law. "Until now,
the war that was going on has been a silent war. People did not really know
about it.
"Now
what was happening in Gulu is still going on elsewhere in the Central African
Republic and in Congo. What about the people who are suffering over there? They
are going through what we were going through."
Kony 2012
has become a surprise hit around the world some 25 years after Kony founded his
militia and a decade after the peak of its reign of terror in northern Uganda.
But its makers, a group called Invisible Children, were widely criticised by
Ugandan journalists and other aid agencies yesterday for being self-promoting
(the video spends much of its 28 minutes on its maker, Jason Russell and his
young son, Gavin) and opaque about its use of funds – and for concentrating on
an issue that has dramatically changed in recent years.
"They
are focusing more on an American solution to an African conflict than the
holistic approach which should include regional governments and people who are
very key to make this a success," said Victor Ochen, the director of
African Youth Initiative Network based in Lira, the site of one Kony's worst
massacres in Uganda.
"They
are advocating for a mechanism to end war with more attention to a perpetrator
not victims. Campaigning on killing one man and that's the end is not enough …
There are many people who are caught up in this war. Invisible Children has
good access to international media but they have no connection with the
community they claim to represent." Ugandan writer Angelo Opi-Aiya Izama
wrote on his blog: "To call the campaign a misrepresentation is an
understatement ... its portrayal of his alleged crimes in northern Uganda are
from a bygone era." He added that the main problems in the area now are
child prostitution, HIV and a mysterious and incurable neurological disorder,
known as nodding disease, which has afflicted more than 4,000 children.
Izama said
that although the LRA is still preying on civilians in neighbouring countries,
it was no longer an unknown problem. He said: "The LRA leader is the
subject of an international manhunt by a joint force of Ugandan, Congolese,
Sudanese and Central African troops. This effort is assisted by US combat
troops."
In 2009 a
US-supported military operation dubbed Operation Lightning Thunder and carried
out by Uganda government forces failed to kill Kony. The Ugandan army said Kony
had left his compound a few minutes before the attack. Since it was set up in
2003, Invisible Children, a San Diego-based charity has released 11 films and
run regular "awareness-raising" film tours across the US, mainly
showing to schools and universities. The group is barely known in Uganda, but
claims to have given school and university scholarships to 750 children, and helped
re-build schools. Acaye said that his old school is one of those the group has
rebuilt.
"Now
that the situation in Gulu is stabilised and there is no longer war there,
there is reconstruction of the place. Schools are being built. It is not the
fault of the people there that they were abducted and used. They need to be
helped," he said. "The organisation has fought really hard to rebuild
my school. It is doing good work." Acaye was taken prisoner by the LRA
militia when it attacked his home village of Koro, near Gulu, but he escaped
after three weeks when one unit handed him over to another.
"I got
lucky. I was taken by a second group which did not know much about me, and I
was transferred to that group. They asked me how long I had been with the LRA
and I said three months so they thought I had no intention of running away, so
they did not watch me," Acaye said.
He found
his way back to his village, but from then on joined the hundreds of children
who walked into Gulu to sleep every night for safety. It was while he was
sleeping on a verandah there that he was found by Invisible Children.
"They
could not understand what was happening. They wanted a kid who was sleeping
there and who spoke English. I could understand English and I could say what
was happening, so that is how I was in their film," Acaye said.
Invisible
Children's accounts show it is a cash rich operation, which more than tripled
its income to $9m (£5.68m) in 2011, mainly from personal donations. Of this,
nearly 25% was spent on travel and film-making.
Most of the money raised has been spent in the US. The accounts show
$1.7m went on US employee salaries, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000
in "professional services" – thought to be Washington lobbyists
– and $1.07m in travel expenses. Nearly
$400,000 was spent on offices in San Diego.
Questions
were raised yesterday about its operation after it emerged that Charity
Navigator, a US charity evaluator, gave the organisation only three out of four
stars overall, four stars financially, and two stars for "accountability
and transparency". Noelle Jouglet communication director, responded in a
statement saying: "Our score is currently at 2 stars due to the fact that
Invisible Children currently does not have five independent voting members on
our board of directors. We are currently in the process of interviewing potential
board members, and our goal is to add an additional independent member this
year in order to regain our 4-star rating by 2013."
The three
founders of the group, who advocate direct military intervention in response to
the LRA, were also criticised for posing
with guns alongside members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in
2008. In a statement the group responded : "We were there to see Joseph
Kony come to the table to sign the Final Peace Agreement. The Sudan People's
Liberation Army (SPLA) was surrounding our camp for protection since Sudan was
mediating the peace talks. We thought it would be funny to bring back to our
friends and family a joke photo. You know, "Haha – they have bazookas in
their hands but they're actually fighting for peace'."
The group ,
which employs around 100 people, is expected to raise millions of dollars from
their Kony2012 video but has so far not said how much has been donated or how
it will spend the money. Visitors are invited to click a button and buy T
shirts, bracelets and posters, ranging from $30-$250. "People will
think you're an advocate of awesome",
runs the sales pitch.
The video
has broken records for the speed at which a 30-minute film has spread.
"It's an internet phenomenon. It's the mob mentality. Everyone can feel
outraged. We are buying into the emotion and handing over money but who it's
going to and how it is helping [Uganda's children] is left unanswered",
says Phil Borge, a director of London-based 1000 Heads, a "word of
mouth" marketing agency. According to figures posted on Vimeo, only four
people viewed the video on 3 March , and eight on 4 March, but 58,000 on 5
March, 2.7m on 6 March and 8.2m on 7 March. It had been played over 38m times
on YouTube by yesterday evening.
Jedediah
Jenkins, director of idea development for Invisible Children, called the
criticisms "myopic" and said the film represented a "tipping
point" in that it "got young people to care about an issue on the
other side of the planet that doesn't affect them".
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