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Over the last three years, tens of thousands of children from a single area smaller than Los Angeles County have been kidnapped in the dead of night. Thousands of boys and girls forced from their beds at gunpoint, tortured, terrorized. How is this possible? How can this be true? It seems too horrific to be real – but it is. The kids are from the northern part of the small African nation of Uganda. They are ordinary kids – going to school, listening to hip-hop, dreaming of their futures – but nightly they face a terrifying and all-too-real possibility: being kidnapped by a rebel leader named Joseph Kony, who heads a group called “The Lord's Resistance Army.” He’s a Christian extremist who wants to take over the country and run it according to the Ten Commandments. He’s doing what he’s doing in the name of God. And the rest of the world is, for the most part, standing by and letting it happen.

The UN is now calling the situation in northern Uganda one of the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. Kony kidnaps the children – and forces them to kill that same night, often a member of their own family. If he takes three brothers, he forces two to kill the third – or all to die at once. He preys on their minds, telling them that once they’ve killed, they’re part of his army forever. He pulls them from everything they know – their parents, their homes, their schools – and forces them to steal and kill as roving packs of rebels – or face certain death.

The Night Commuters

To avoid being kidnapped, every night thousands of children travel from their homes before dusk and sleep in two protected villages. The sight is almost unbelievable Children sleeping crammed on church steps, bus station floors, anywhere they can find – just to be safe for the night.

Some of the kidnapped children do manage to escape – but even then they can’t return home. Kony will search them out at their villages, and if he finds them, force them to kill their parents and loved ones. A few organizations have opened “re-education centers” for the children. The first night after they arrive, counselors walk up and down the open sleeping areas all through the night, telling the traumatized children, “We love you. You are our children. We are sorry we could not protect you. We welcome you home. What has happened is not your fault...."

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