To the Editors:

While most of the world focuses its attention on events in the Middle East, and even those who don’t follow current events manage to catch a brief glimpse of the strikes against civil protesters through the tube, I would like to remind our campus of other events in the international arena that are maiming and displacing civilian populations. I am writing of a small department in the North of Uganda, and the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Joseph Kony operates a guerrilla insurgency out of Verunga National Park.

For over two decades, the Lord’s Resistance Army has led a violent insurgency against the Ugandan government. The LRA has mutilated remote communities and towns who are disconnected from urban centers and unable to get military or medical aid in time. In recent years, the LRA has spread into the DRC (using Verunga National Park as cover) leaving a wake of destruction and continuing to attack civilians, pillage towns, rape and abduct women and kidnap children into their battlefield as soldiers. Despite the Ugandan and DRC’s military campaigns against Joseph Kony, and an ICC warrant for his arrest and indictment on charges of crimes of war, the LRA has continued to terrorize provinces in Uganda, Southern Sudan, the DRC, Rwanda and the Central African Republic.

For those interested in International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, and international citizenship in general there is a screening of Tony, the newest film by Invisible Children next week on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m., in West Lecture Hall. The film screening and presentation will be facilitated by a group of four volunteers from Invisible Children, including a university student from Uganda. Invisible Children is an organization that works to raise awareness in the Western world for the plight of the towns, communities, and villages who have become the collateral in Joseph Kony’s violent campaign. Tony is a follow-up to the original film that began Invisible Children in 2003.

—Justin Halliwill
College sophomore