East End Residents Join Calls To Stop Kony

 

East End residents marked Kony Day 2012 on April 20 by hanging a hand-painted banner outside their home.

Thousands of people around the country and the globe marked Kony Day 2012 on April 20 and St. John was not left out, thanks to one family on the island’s East End.

Virginia Knaplund and Brooke Mitchell were among the millions of people who responded to California-based Invisible Children’s internet campaign to bring Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony to justice.

Invisible Children’s video about Kony went viral on YouTube and Facebook, spurring backlash from people questioning the non-profit group’s accounting, but undeniably raising awareness about his brutal reign in war-torn Africa.

“Kony is a leader in the Lord’s Resistance Army in Africa which for 25 years has been capturing children and turning them in to child soldiers,” said Mitchell.

The warlord has been indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. He has evaded capture and is the court’s number one most wanted criminal.

Invisible Children designated April 20 as Kony Day 2012, urging activists across the globe to put up posters, stickers and banners about the campaign to capture and bring Kony to justice.

Heeding the call on St. John, Mitchell sewed and painted a five foot banner and hung it outside of Knaplund’s East End home.

“The idea was to make people aware of the Stop Kony campaign and the more attention that is paid to this the better,” said Mitchell. “The intention was to raise awareness and have more energy put behind stopping him.”