Who is Joseph Kony?

According to the Kony2012 website, the pledge for supporters to sign reads:
“Joseph Kony is one of the world’s worst war criminals and I support the international effort to arrest him, disarm the LRA and bring the child soldiers home.”

Joseph Kony first appeared on the political scene in 1986, as detailed an article in The Independent. According to the article, Kony took a prominent position after a handful of civil uprisings in Uganda.

Becoming a militia leader, Kony gathered discontented ex-soldiers to his cause. And with his growing army, he has since conscripted over 30,000 child soldiers into the Lord’s Resistance Army.

The brutal indoctrination process that Kony uses on his child-soldiers — forcing each boy to murder his own parents — is what has drawn so much attention to this Ugandan warlord.

Kony’s band of guerilla fighters hold him as a messiah figure, giving him power and control over a band of zealous and psychologically scarred fighters.

Kony considers himself to be the “spokesperson of God,” according to an article in The Independent.

In an interview with IRIN News, Vincent Otti ­— Kony’s second in command­ — revealed that the LRA believe themselves to be largely innocent of the genocidal attacks against their own people. In fact, Otti said in the interview that the Ugandan government is also to blame because it fought against the LRA.

In the same interview, Otti said: “Lord’s Resistance Army is just the name of the movement, because we are fighting in the name of God. People always ask us, are we fighting for the [biblical] Ten Commandments of God. That is true – because the Ten Commandments of God is the constitution that God has given to the people of the world. All people.”