Skip to main content

Scam or Truth?: the controversy behind KONY 2012

An almost thirty minutes film and campaign, entitled as “KONY 2012”, which being uploaded on Youtube by the Invisible Children Inc (American charity non-profit organization) account on March 5 2012 has reaching its successful publication by gaining more than 70 million viewers worldwide by only six days. KONY 2012 has been dominating people’s discussion especially in the social media. On twitter, even celebrities talked about it: Oprah Winfrey, Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and many more. The film itself talks about Joseph Kony, an Ugandan guerrilla group leader, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The LRA kidnapped tens of thousands of children and youth for use as soldiers and sex slaves. As quoted from the film: “Kony stands accused of overseeing the systematic kidnapping of countless African children, brainwashing the boys into fighting for him, turning the girls into sex slaves and killing those who don’t comply. His forces are believed to have slaughtered tens of thousands of people and are known for hacking the lips off their victims. Kony has been wanted by the international criminal court since 2005 on charges that include crimes against humanity. He has been living in the bush outside Uganda since that time.” As provided on the film’s information, the goal of the campaign is “…to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.” The Invisible Children also encourage people to support them by donating via website that they had provided.

However, before you spread your awareness by supporting #KONY2012 or #stopKONY2012 campaign just like your favorite celebrities did, you had better check out the other viewpoint regards to this whole KONY thing. As a non-profit organization, the Invisible Children Inc gained critics from many sides that also questioning where the big fund would go. For instance, Rosebell Kagumire, an Ugandan girl who lives in the US made a response video against KONY 2012 on  “KONY 2012 Video is misleading”, she said that KONY 2012 film is misleading because people of Uganda already knew that Kony either has been dead for five years or has not been living in Uganda anymore. The Army itself formed 22 years ago and they have not struck again in 6 years. She also emphasized that she is defending for neither Kony’s side nor the Invisible Children Inc’s. Kony’s crimes absolutely cannot be denied, indeed. On the other hand, isn’t global campaigning for the past crimes considered as vain since Kony is no longer active? Meanwhile, there is a real humanitarian crisis in Syria where the situation is more severe than Uganda and deserves world’s urgent attention.

The Invisible Children Inc has a good sense of business. They know whether social media is a very powerful media to collect the mass globally. Along with their fancy film that easily took the viewers’ sympathy, they must have gained many cash from donation and the sales of KONY bracelets ($30 USD each). I am not going to write down their profit calculation since I did not find any trusted source. However, I admit that this campaign is a big success; it is not easy to attract people’s attention to watch a thirty minutes semi documentary campaign. Thus, I encourage you to do a further research if you interested on this KONY 2012 issue therefore you won’t be misled by rumours.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Millennials as the Key Driver of the Global Startup Wave

After the great fall, there would be a wave of rebuilding. The same thing goes to the entrepreneurial spirit after The Great Recession. During The Great Recession, the U.S. economy has eliminated more than 8 million jobs which is the steepest decline since the end of World War II.  It has caused many businesses to close for good or file for bankruptcy, on the other hand, the emerging number of unemployment triggered a significant increase in entrepreneurship. The high amount of global unemployment leads more youth to believe that a possible solution to their careers is a startup business. A group of people who are born between the 1980s to the 1990s, which usually labeled as Generation Y or millennials, is suggested as the most entrepreneurial generation compared to the rest. The rough background has made the millennials’ mindset more aware of the global economic risks, therefore, the crisis shock to the workforce fueled a surge in entrepreneurship. As an example, back in 1995...
Post a Comment
Read more

Capitalism FTW: It's Just a Matter of Time until Robots Take Over Our Jobs

As human beings, we always strive for improvement in every life aspect. That is why our prehistoric ancestors created their own stone tools, bow and arrows, and other survival tools. The evolution continued until the existence of modern Homo sapiens, which is the modern human nowadays. Modern humans discovered more complex inventions such as wheels, medicines, propellers; basically our surroundings are the latest development of the earlier technologies. Humans are constantly improving new technologies in order to assist our daily activities, to innovate breakthrough technologies; we will not stop inventing because it is our instinct to make daily things done faster and be easier to do; it is our survival mechanism. However, this whole modernization thing is known to make conflict amongst us. The Industrial Revolution in 18 th to 19 th centuries was a both historical and controversial transition from labour production methods to powered, special-purpose machinery in many industri...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Classic Tale of Money and Power in a Modern World: The Extreme Wealth Gap Occurs when 1% Billionaires Rule the World as Global Wealth Holders in 2015

This is a common concept in society: working hard is the solution to fighting poverty. Even ignorant judgment would point people who lived under the poverty line as lazy people. I bet low-paid labours in developing countries wouldn’t agree on that statement. They are working hard but barely can afford to meet the basic needs of themselves and their families. Go ask garment labours in Myanmar or Bangladesh: after their long hours working in the factory, could they afford housing, food, and medicines? Unfortunately, along with their exhausting hard working they are still trapped in poverty. Even in the European Union, there are 9% workers at the risk of poverty. The global financial inequality crisis is getting worse than ever. Supported by data from Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook 2015 report, Oxfam revealed that 1% population in the world is wealthier than the rest of the population. Published on January 2016, Oxfam elaborated the economic gap through its policy paper entit...
Post a Comment
Read more