Senators Trying to Keep up Pressure on Joseph Kony
Published at
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — On the eve of the Kony 2012 national “day of action,” senators wanted Americans to know they haven’t forgotten about the campaign to find Uganda’s Joseph Kony.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., on Thursday introduced legislation to expand the existing Department of State Rewards Program for Kony.
“Information is a powerful tool and with these authorities, we can help bring brutal and dangerous fugitives to justice,” Kerry said in a statement. “These kinds of programs promote tips and leads that lead to arrests and hobble the movement of international criminals. It sends a message to brutal thugs like Kony that their days are numbered and they can only hide out for so long.”
The Kerry legislation would expand existing authority to allow the State Department to publicize and pay rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals engaged in transnational organized crime, or foreign nationals wanted by any international criminal tribunal for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide.
At a press conference Thursday, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a cosponsor of the legislation, expressed confidence that the Department of Defense is having some luck in narrowing down where Kony is hiding. He added that an expanded rewards program would offer an incentive to people to leave the Lord’s Resistance Army and “provide critical, recent intelligence about their movements, their practices and Kony’s whereabouts.”
A group of senators, hoping to whip up a little Internet frenzy like the original Kony 12 campaign video did, came out with their own video on Thursday. The seven-minute video focuses on the Senate’s efforts to support the removal of Kony and his top lieutenants in the Lord’s Resistance Army from the battlefield in central Africa and is aimed at the young Americans who have become part of the Kony 2012 movement in the last month.
“The timing here is deliberate,” said Coons. ”It’s an effort to communicate back to millions of people around the world to say that we, the United States Senate, hear you, we are listening, we are acting and we are hopeful that everyone that has been interested in and concerned about the issues raised by the Lord Resistance Army, Joseph Kony and the efforts to bring him to justice.”
“We’re going to do it,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said. “We’re going to bring it to a close. And it’s now, everyone’s talking about it, assuming we can do, we’ve got kids from all over America joining in and saying you’ve got to get this guy Joseph Kony, and we’re going to do it.”
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio