On this episode of the Global News podcast What happened to…? Erica Vella finds out what happened to viral video, Kony 2012, which aimed to shed light on the Ugandan militant who founded the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Dominic Akena grew up in a small village in Patongo, Uganda; his childhood was spent outside playing with other children in his village.
“We made slingshots and we would go boat and we’d go fishing and things like that,” he said.
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“I would play lots of different kinds of sports; I would do track and field. So I just remember being really happy as a kid: all this green space, just being absolutely worry-free. You wake up every morning, wake up (and ask), what are we doing today?”
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In 2001, when Akena was seven years old, he remembers hearing a lot of commotion early one morning.
“We could hear people screaming in the distance. … My mother (brought us) into the woods. We didn’t know what this was,” he said.
“Later on in the morning, we learned that several people had been killed in a village next door, that the rebels came around and people have abducted children, they killed elderly people. And that was one of the most terrifying experiences for our neighboring village.”
The LRA had attacked a village close to Akena’s home and from that day, he said his life would change; each night his family would sleep in the woods to avoid the rebel group. That went on for three years.
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“We were tired of going to sleep in the woods every night, especially when it rained. It was so uncomfortable,” he said.
In 2004, Akena decided to sleep in the classroom with his older brother instead of going into the woods with the rest of his family. Just as he was about to sleep one night, he heard a lot of noise from outside of the classroom.
That night, Akena and his older brother were abducted by the LRA.
On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks with Akena about his capture and also learns more about the LRA and how a film produced in 2012 aimed to shed light on the atrocities committed by Kony and LRA.
Contact:
Email: erica.vella@globalnews.ca
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