Critics say Kony 2012 is a scam

On March 4, the 27-minute video “Kony 2012” was uploaded to YouTube by the Invisible Children foundation in order to expose the crimes of the notorious leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, to the world. According to The Guardian, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, more than 21 million people viewed the film by the next day.

Since then, Invisible Children and its co-founder Jason Russell have been the subject of almost as much criticism as Kony. While students interviewed by The Student Voice acknowledge that what has happened in Uganda is sad and should be exposed, most said they now believe that “Kony 2012” is a scam.

As revealed by the YouTube statistic sheet for the video, within a week, the video had more than 80 million views. Students said that they first saw the video as shared links and trending topics on Twitter or Facebook.

In the video, documentarian Jason Russell seeks to make the public aware of the terrible things Kony has been doing in Central Africa for the last 26 years.

“Kony has been kidnapping children into his rebel group, the LRA, turning girls into sex slaves and boys into child soldiers,” Russell says in the video. “He makes them mutilate people’s faces and he forces them to kill their parents.”

Russell argues in the video that “if that happened one night in America, it would be on the cover of Newsweek,” so he is doing everything in his power to make Kony just as popular as he would be if he was a threat to America.

The “Kony 2012” film calls on supporters to gather and decorate buildings and streets with signs making the public aware of Kony on April 20, but, as of press time, there was no mention of the date on the official Invisible Children website. Instead, the website says that if people want to do something in support of the cause, they should email their congressional representatives, and then meet with them in April.

Numerous videos have been uploaded to YouTube to illustrate some of the reasons why people believe that Kony 2012 and Invisible Children are scams. Reasons include the fact that Kony hasn’t been spotted in Uganda in six years, that the al-Qaeda terrorist group seems to be the only threat to Uganda right now and that Invisible Children spends only one-third of its funding in Central Africa.

Students agree with some of the criticisms, particularly IC not devoting more of its money directly to Central Africa.

“I think that the money the foundation is making hardly goes to Africa,” sophomore Tiara Johnson said. “If 13 million dollars are being made, then the conditions they claim are in Africa would be dealt with.”

However, sophomore Sky Minor said that she doesn’t think members of the IC are being paid more than they say they are.

“I don’t think that people who already have money need to steal money from children who need it,” Minor said. “I find this accusation ridiculous.”

IC CEO Ben Keesey provided a video response to the financial allegations brought forth.

“Expenses that are defined as ‘program expenses’ is money spent that is directly contributed to the mission. This is what people are looking for when they say ‘what percent goes to the cause,’” Keesey said. “And over the years using our three-prong approach, we have continually adapted to fill the area of greatest need.” During this comment, a screen displaying the percentage of money donated annually between the years 2007-2009 shows that roughly 85 percent of the IC’s earnings goes to the cause.

Another accusation is that Kony has not been seen in Uganda in six years. In response to this, the IC said that “Joseph Kony is presumed alive by all international actors in the region. On 2 December 2011  an abductee escaped into a town in the Central African Republic and, according to the United Nations, the boy reported that Joseph Kony was alive in southeastern CAR and was aware of the US military deployment in the region. This corroborates with information received from the United Nations and Invisible Children’s partners in the region.”

A blog on the Foreign Policy magazine website says that although Kony is definitely not in Uganda and hasn’t been for six years, his methods should still be exposed now because “the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.”

According to theresolve.org, which is an organization that is partnered with Invisible Children, “the LRA left Uganda in 2006. But … the LRA has since continued to perpetrate horrific atrocities against vulnerable communities in South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Central African Republic and the situation in those areas remains urgent and neglected.”

Johnson said that after thinking about the production as a whole, the “Kony 2012” film does seem like a scam because the filmmaker tries to appeal to our emotions by putting his son into it and [Russell] also does not include that Kony is inactive in Uganda. The film makes it seem like Kony is still abducting children in Uganda at this moment.

The organization also has a rehabilitation center for the children who were abducted by Kony or are suffering from indirect attacks by him and may be traumatized. This is being done because, since Kony has not yet been captured, he is still a threat to Uganda.

Russell’s nude meltdown on the streets of San Diego, California, which was broadcasted on TMZ news clip may have added to the criticisms about the legitimacy of Invisible Children. Russell’s wife and doctors said that the cause of his behavior was  a “brief reactive psychosis, an acute state brought on by extreme exhaustion, stress and dehydration.”

According to junior Shannell Van Liew, Russell’s actions show that IC may not be that serious and that people should act on their own now that they’re aware of Kony, instead of relying solely on IC because “we do not need the popularity and instructions of an organization to do something about what is happening now.”