Monday, January 16, 2006

Joseph Kony: A monster at large

Africa is full of characters who create mayhem at home while remaining completely unknown abroad. Let me introduce you to a particular bugbear of mine.

You may not have heard of Joseph Kony, but he is the biggest mass murderer at large in the world today, bar none. Kony leads the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorised northern Uganda for almost 20 years.

What makes him uniquely odious is that his guerrillas are abducted children. By brainwashing, torturing and brutalising his innocent victims, Kony has created a child army that has devastated a swathe of Africa.

At least 20,000 children have disappeared into Kony's clutches. He has forced about 1.5 million people - virtually the entire rural population of northern Uganda - to flee their villages for squalid refugee camps. And tens of thousands have died.

Read full story by David Blair, Telegraph UK, Jan 11, 2006.

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