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Contextualising genocide is difficult. The millions (billions?) of words written on the Holocaust attest to the challenge. A Brilliant Genocide manages to successfully tell the story of the most neglected humanitarian crisis since the formation of the United Nations. The salient facts are brought to the fore to create a cohesive narrative of the Acholi genocide that does not shy away from any of the guilty parties, be they government or rebel. Both Museveni and Kony face documentary reckoning.

geoff-naismith-burnt-hut-bush

This is a brave film, not least because it faces the very real possibility of getting people killed. That is not a criticism. There is no other way to tell the truth without risk. I do not want to recount here what happened in Northern Uganda over the past three decades, Ebony Butler does a better job of that than I could, I want people to see the film for themselves. A Brilliant Genocide allows the survivors, politicians, academics, and soldiers to speak for themselves, to tell their own stories. In doing so, the war is humanised in a way that is not possible through any other medium. The visceral emotion of men and women discussing the atrocities they endured is not lost as it may be if they are just read about. Their accounts are supplemented by archive footage and Hieronymus Bosch-like depictions of torture and violence. All this is done in an unobtrusive style, understanding that no rhetorical device can match simple truth telling.

“TO REITERATE: FIND A WAY OF WATCHING THIS FILM”

Butler must be especially commended (I can think of no other word) for securing interviews with male survivors of rape. A taboo subject everywhere, but particularly in Uganda. It is not known for LGBT rights and homophobic attacks are commonplace. All of the survivors who appear in the film speak with dignity and measure. At no point does it descend into calls for retribution, no matter how tempting that must have been sometimes. I honestly do not know what more I can say about this documentary. It frankly should not have needed to be made. The Acholi genocide should be ranked alongside the killing fields and Rwanda in the worst excesses of the past century. That so few are knowledgeable is tragic.

A Brilliant Genocide is a stunning exemplar of what film is capable of. I hope that a wider release can be secured through streaming services or even just free on Youtube. It needs to be watched. The survivors need to be heard. I do not know if the film can find justice for the Acholi or even the peace they deserve. However, I do know that the more people that are aware of the genocide, the more uncomfortable it will be for the perpetrators. The spotlight will take away their hiding spaces. To reiterate: find a way of watching this film. If you cannot then please try and read about the war. It has taken 100 years for the Armenian genocide to be fully recognised and acknowledged. The Acholi do not have that long.

Julius L. Geertz (The Panoptic UK)

https://thepanoptic.co.uk/2016/10/01/a-brilliant-genocide/

Upcoming Film Festival Screenings:

21st October at the Document Human Rights Film Festival in Glasgow

22nd and 23rd October at the 36th Cambridge International Film Festival

9th of November at the We The People’s Film Festival in London

10th November at the Lone Star Film Festival, Sundance Square Fort Worth

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A documentary accusing President Museveni and the Uganda army of genocide against the Acholi people in the north is being used to lobby for an end to US aid to Uganda.

By Daniel Nelson

A Brilliant Genocide argues that Museveni exploited atrocities by a rebel group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), as a cover for his own “reign of terror” against the Acholis.

The film’s website carries a petition asking the US President to cut arms supplies and non-humanitarian aid, to ensure Museveni and others face justice, and to use sanctions and diplomacy to force the Uganda government to compensate victims of army violence.

After a film festival screening in London last Friday, Olara Otunnu, a Uganda politician, diplomat and former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, insisted that Acholi culture and civilisation faced “existential annihilation.

“We must address how to resuscitate [this culture] gather the pieces – a Marshall Plan is not big enough for Acholiland today,” he said.

The crisis had been written about and been the subject of reports, but all had been “studiously ignored and brushed under the carpet”.

Director Ebony Butler has said that she started making a film about Joseph Kony, the LRA and the use of child soldiers in 2009 but “along our six-year journey we found some completely untold ‘hidden’ stories that we felt were even more important to bring to light …”

Those responsible for these massive human rights abuses were still in office today, she has written, and continue to enjoy “complete impunity for their crimes”.

Why the title? As an interviewee in the film says: “No food, no hydration, sexual violence from the soldiers who were meant to protect them. That’s why this was a ‘brilliant genocide’ – a silent genocide: perfect crime.”

http://oneworld.org/2016/10/03/uganda-government-accused-of-the-perfect-crime/

Sign the petition here: www.bit.ly/STOPM7

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The following was written by Dee Allimadi. Dee is a Ugandan living in exile in London and she recently attended A Brilliant Genocide‘s U.K Premiere at the Raindance Film Festival. This is what Allimadi had to say after seeing our film:

‘The hammering on the door continued and by this time Aparu was on the floor with her head in her hands rocking back and forth like a patient in a mental asylum. She lamented in her native Acholi, ‘lubanga na’, ‘lubanga na’ (my God, my God). Lanyero quietly prayed that it was government soldiers and not the LRA rebels. With government soldiers their fate might be rape, torture and either killing on the spot or huddled into “protective camps”. Your fate would be decided very quickly but with the rebels, abduction was a virtual certainty. The rape and torture would become part and parcel of your life.’ (Excerpt from ‘Abducted‘ by Doris Allimadi).

D. Allimadi Cont:
‘This was the life in Acholi Land following Museveni’s ‘liberation’ of Uganda in 1986 and promise of fundamental change. Homesteads were regularly attacked by both rebels and government troops, young men and women abducted and food stolen. Whilst the rest of Uganda begun to somewhat prosper, Gulu and other parts of North Uganda were left to languish in absolute poverty.

On 30th September, I had the privilege of watching the very harrowing and heart-breaking docu-film, A Brilliant Genocide directed and produced by the very talented film maker, Ebony Butler. Ms Butler spent many years researching and corroborating her findings before making this docu-film.

The docu-film had a very balanced and extensively researched view of the atrocities in Gulu and North Uganda with contributions by Milton Allimadi, Editor and Publisher at Blackstarnews, former ambassador and UN Special Representative Olara Otunnu, Adam Branch, a professor at Cambridge University and Vincent Magombe, a journalist.

When one thinks of the atrocities perpetrated against the Acholi people, the name Joseph Kony immediately springs to mind. Kony and his LRA were responsible for countless abductions, killing, maiming and displacing families in Gulu and other parts of North Uganda. Abducted children were forced to become rebels, turning on their own families, friends and neighbours, or child brides with objections leading to repercussions. Whilst Kony’s actions were deplorable, inexcusable and indefensible, A Brilliant Genocide tells us that his crimes are only but a tip of the iceberg. Thousands of Acholi’s in fact perished at the hands of Museveni’s planned and systematic silent genocide whilst the rest of Uganda and the international community turned a blind eye. According to Olara Otunnu, there was a conspiracy of silence.

How could they have not known? The nightmare in the North of Uganda was well documented. Women and men were raped, sometimes brutally gang raped and deliberately infected with HIV/Aids, murdered in cold blood, forced into ‘protective camps’ where they starved to death and according to the WHO, about 1000 people a week died from treatable and preventable disease.

The docu-film was hard to watch. To see such grave suffering of innocent people, especially children and pregnant women. Harder still, because some of the witnesses were in the audience and were given the opportunity to speak to us afterwards. The scars were still visible in their voices, so to speak.

Why is the world still silent?
Friends of Acholis and Uganda, end the silence. Hear the cries of the mother who has lost her own, the father stripped of all dignity and the child robbed of its innocence.

A Brilliant Genocide exposes the extent of murderous intent of Museveni towards the Acholi, whom he has previously, allegedly referred to as biological substances. Witness statements reveal that people were put into mass graves, covered with earth and set on fire, that villages were attacked and citizens shot at will and yet, no one said a word. There was no condemnation from the international community, not even from our closest neighbours and friends Kenya and Tanzania. The sun rose and set whilst blood of the Acholi’s run free.’

The next screening of A Brilliant Genocide will be on October 21 at the Document International Human Rights Film Festival in Glasgow, followed by an expert panel and key note address and also on October 22nd and 23rd at the 36th Cambridge International Film Festival. 

Fore more info or ticket sales please go to: www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk and www.documentfilmfestival.org

You can help. Your signature alone can make a difference.

Please sign the petition on Change.Org: www.bit.ly/STOPM7