Ugandan dictator of 32 years Gen. Yoweri Museveni
The film “A Brilliant Genocide” shown at this excellent Brooklyn For Peace (BFP) Forum on May 16, was produced and directed by Australian Ebony Butler in 2016. It presents a stark contrast to the KONY 2012 film which was shown in the U.S. and which depicts President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda as the leader of a “war on terrorism” against the violent rebel leader Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
The film graphically depicts through interviews with survivors and film footage that since Museveni seized power in 1986, he has engaged in a brutal effort to wipe out Uganda’s Acholi people, who live in the northern region of the country. His attacks have included raping men and women, and torturing and murdering the populations of entire villages. His troops burn people’s homes and routinely throw villagers of all ages into pits to be burned alive. In addition, under Museveni’s orders over two million people have either forcibly been removed into horrendous concentration camps or killed if they fail to evacuate within 24 hour notice.
Over 50,000 people have died every year in these camps. No food, water, shelter or medicine is provided for them by Museveni’s government. Diseases such as Ebola and AIDS intentionally inflicted by rape run rampant. The Military, left behind allegedly to “guard” the camps are based at the center, so that the civilian occupants surrounding them will fall under attack first.
The film’s title derives from the fact that while Museveni claims that the camps were designed to “protect” the Acholi people from the LRA, in fact they were designed for intentional mass deaths. The only food available has been that provided by the UN’s World Food Program. In 2004 Jan Egeland, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, called the situation in northern Uganda “the world’s worst neglected humanitarian disaster”.
While there is ample evidence that Kony turned to coercive tactics to recruit people into the LRA when his rebellion began to fail, including severely punishing those who failed to join him, the point is made in the film that Museveni masterfully used Kony’s rebellion as an excuse to further his own unfettered violence against the Acholi people under the guise of hunting down the LRA.
The film also makes the point that Museveni has been pursuing his goal of eliminating the Acholi people with the full and knowing support of the U.S. Photos in the film include Museveni with George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack and Michelle Obama.
In discussion after the film, the extremely knowledgeable speakers Milton Allimadi and Helen Epstein stated that the U.S. has been providing Museveni with $1 billion in aid annually. The U.S. provided its Elite Forces to assist Museveni in hunting down Kony, who has been charged with war crimes while Museveni has been given total immunity.
Museveni was re-elected in 2016 despite massive corruption documented by observers and his use of violence against opposition leaders and their supporters by state security agents.
Among the ways Museveni’s regime has served U.S. corporate interests has been to provide the U.S. with use of the extremely fertile land of northern Uganda; and Museveni has signed an oil refinery deal with the U.S. In addition, Museveni has been involved in instigating wars in the countries surrounding Uganda.
Rwanda’s people were terrorized by invaders from Museveni’s army on October 1, 1990. The current President of Rwanda was the Chief of Military Intelligence of Uganda’s army.
Museveni’s army is responsible for massacres of many people in Congo. Now Museveni is militarily involved in South Sudan and Somalia among other countries. All of this is secretly coordinated with the U.S. under Africa Command, which includes U.S. troop deployments throughout Africa that nobody in the U.S. is aware of until something happens, such as the deaths of four U.S. servicemen in Niger.
In all of these countries the U.S. has interests in resources such as oil, cobalt, gold, diamonds, timber and ivory. The speakers concluded by stating that the reign of terror of Museveni’s regime would never have been tolerated by the U.S. and the West or ignored by the media if it were occurring in any European country.
It is ignored because it is happening in Africa, in a country –Uganda– populated by Black people. The speakers urged that Americans become informed and talk to others about what is occurring.
Information about the film “A Brilliant Genocide” is available on www.abrilliantgenocide.com
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