northern Democratic Republic of Congo, was found guilty yesterday on
all 3 counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC)
at The Hague. And Congolese hope the sentence would ensure that this
criminal will be out of commission and off the streets of Congo for
the rest of his evil life.
This was not a sexy affair, despite the presence in court of glamorous
Angelina Jolie. Nor was this a "savvy media campain," to borrow
Washington Post's Hayley Tsukayama's phrase to describe what his own
paper's editorial board billed as "the most explosive viral video
phenomenon in history"--yeah!, you guessed right: both superlatives
refer to Invisible Children's "Kony 2012."
At The Hague, it wasn't about "slactivism" but the painstaking piecing
together by the much-criticized ICC prosecution of one of the most
horrendous crime in history: turning kids into killers and zombies.
While there are still Lubanga's associates roaming the hills and the
streets of North Kivu--the name of FARDC Gen Jean-Bosco Ntaganda comes
to mind--this conviction can for now be rightly hailed as one of the
single most dramatic action the international community, often
indifferent to the plight of Congolese, has ever taken on behalf of
the much-maligned people of the DRC.
And it's fitting that Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir should be abuzz with
this "landmark conviction."
The other day a western journo wanted my commenting on "Kony 2012."
And he was somewhat taken aback by the fact that I still had to watch
the "the most explosive viral video phenomenon in history."
Well, truth be told: the damn thing can only be viral in Europe and
North America where people have enough leisure time to play that kind
of games. Not here in Kinshasa, mind you!
For one, it costs more than $3 to watch the half-hour video at a
cybercafe--double that amount if the Internet connection is slow that
day! In a country where the majority of denizens survive on less than
$1 a day, that proposition is simply preposterous.
For the other, "Kony 2012" is a fundraising and marketing tool (and
the raving reviews it got were all about that). And its proxy is
Ugandan kids. Not Congolese kids who, since the long trek of Kony from
Uganda to the jungle of DRC and the Central African Republic, are
these days being killed, maimed, abducted and raped. Nothing new
there: Congolese are generally unfit for sexy black and white, good
vs. evil, linear binary narratives.
Meanwhile in Kinshasa, Radio-Trottoir is unraveling its paradoxical
non-linear fractured and fractal narratives. Some are saying, "Lubanga
out; one more to get out of the picture: Jean-Pierre Bemba!," while
others hotly reject that and point out that the ICC prosecution case
against Bemba is thin, even bare, and not beyond a reasonable
doubt...
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