Lair of Kat's

Invisible Children

Imagine that you are in your bed, asleep, when all of a sudden; you are awaken in the middle of the night by a knocking at your door. Without thinking, you go to answer and you see a tall man with many shorter shadows behind him who look at you in fear. The man grabs you before you can do anything and ties you with the other shadows. You look at them and realize...they are all children about your age; many of them are even your friends! What’s going on? Why are you all tied together? What is going to happen? Still mostly asleep, you don’t do much more and just walk with them. The man is holding a large gun so you don’t want to try anything. Throughout the night, the group goes door to door and literally abducts small children. As morning comes, you leave the city to a more forested area. There is nothing here. As you sit down, you remember hearing stories; kids who were disappearing at night and the stories of what the kids were forced to do. You and your other abducted siblings will go through blood curdling tasks, most of which could kill. Tortures that not only may leave you limp, but also brainwashed. You don’t cry...no...If you do that, they will kill you. You don’t talk either; don’t break the single wall of thin glass that keeps them from pointing you out to be the next victim in the next blood filled exorcize. No, you can’t do anything, but must do everything. If you are not even able to keep up, you are dead. In the end, you are no longer a child of innocence, but a soldier driven by the sight of blood.....

“The war in northern Uganda has been called the most neglected humanitarian emergency in the world today. For the past 23 years, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Government of Uganda (GoU) have been waging a war that has left nearly two million innocent civilians caught in the middle. The GoU's attempt to protect its citizens from this rebel militia has largely failed, resulting in an entire generation of youth that has never known peace.

The LRA rebel movement can be traced back to a woman named Alice Lakwena. In the 1980s, Lakwena believed the Holy Spirit spoke to her and ordered her to overthrow the Ugandan government for being unjust to the Acholi. Lakwena and her followers, known as the Holy Spirit Movement, gained momentum as resentment toward the government increased. When Lakwena was exiled and no clear leader of the movement was left, Joseph Kony, who claimed to be Lakwena’s cousin, took control and transformed Lakwena’s rebel army into the LRA.

Kony's LRA did not receive the same support as the Holy Spirit Movement from the Acholi people. With dwindling approval for their cause and heightened government offensives, the rebels resorted to abducting children and indoctrinating them into their ranks. It is estimated that more than 90% of the LRA’s troops were abducted as children.

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Since September 2008, hostility in the Orientale province in DR Congo and Western Equatoria in South Sudan has reached a feverish pitch. LRA attacks have become more frequent and hostile, provoking military action against the rebel group. In an unprecedented joint military operation, the governments of Uganda, DR Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic launched an attack on LRA strongholds within DR Congo. “Operation Lightning Thunder”, the name designated for the counteroffensive, was largely unsuccessful in light of both the failure to reach top LRA leadership and the onslaught of violence that followed.

One month later on December 24th, 2008, the LRA launched a retaliatory attack against the people of DR Congo. In apparent desperation and a renewed will to spread terror to DR Congo, the LRA murdered over six hundred and abducted more than one hundred and sixty children to fight amongst its ranks. More than 104,000 Congolese have been displaced since Christmas in attempts to escape the LRA forces.”

As you can see, this has been happening for quite a while. And even continues happening today. It is a truly terrible thing for children to face. They are literally being forced drafted into a terrorist army. They have no education, no parents, and are or will soon be just total soldiers. Though it was being completely ignored in the past, America has stepped in with other nations to help with the tragedy that has literally killed millions of innocent lives.

If you find that you wish to help, there is a website below. Maybe you can get your school into it in the schools for schools program. Or perhaps you can just do your own thing. Maybe buy the bracelets so that you can hear one of the kid’s stories, or if you want to hear the entire thing, get the movie! I have personally watched the movie, its really sad, but presented in a tone that will probably keep you hooked…Agh! I’m advertising!

My reason for posting this blog is so that I can prove to you that there is more in the world going on than you think. Things that can literally be called a second Halocaust but the world has no clue at all. I’m not just doing this for the kids in Uganda, but also for any other lives that are affected by a government run by greedy people who use the nation’s money to pay for goods of their own rather than food. For lives that are taken because of neglect from the rest of the world. Souls that are burned because nobody will listen…

If you know something in the world is going on, but it seems not to be hitting anyone’s ears, speak out or even do as the teenagers with Invisible Children have done; Go there and prove it. Take footage for the world to see. Someone will eventually listen, someone always does….

I have put links below for more information on Invisible Children…

Invisible Children Homepage
Uganda Today and History
The Mission of Invisible Children