A Brilliant Genocide (2016) User Reviews

The Silence and Complicity that Ravaged the Acholi People of Northern Uganda

[KudosEthosKarma · 9/10 · 16 July 2018]

A masterfully realised and deeply touching work on a most tragic event in recent Ugandan history. The documentary film by Australian filmmaker Ebony Butler unmasks the involvement of current Ugandan president, dictator and kleptocrat, General Yoweri Museveni, in the twenty-year-long genocide of the Acholi people of Northern Uganda. A humanitarian crisis that: was orchestrated by a US-backed leader, prolonged by UN inaction and ignored by the world-at-large.

The film features a range of Ugandans personally affected and involved in the genocide - former military officers, political figures, academics and ordinary villagers whose lives were ravaged by the violence they suffered under and witnessed firsthand. The picture that emerges is one of decades in which the people of Northern Uganda - in a continent historically besieged by imperial-mediated division and atrocity, dictators, foreign resource exploitation and poverty - suffered a fate that is recurrent in the annals of the region. It is the story of a people persecuted internally on two fronts and externally under the influence of international geopolitics, U.S. imperialism and the harmful impact of so-called humanitarian aid.

A Brilliant Genocide sheds insight into a horrid chapter in Ugandan history that is pertinent in its uncovering of the machinations and forces that continue to drive the suffering experienced in Africa - foreign interests, the humanitarian-industrial complex, and geopolitics, as much as internal power struggles that utilise military might as devices of oppression and personal enrichment. It seeks to end the silence and to expose the complicities attendant upon this tragedy.

Any film that corrects a maliciously misrepresented and misinformed mainstream narrative is an important film. A Brilliant Genocide is one such work.

Kudos Ethos Karma - June, 2018

A Brilliant Genocide

[dorisallimadi · 23 October 2016]

A Brilliant Genocide

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. (Taken from Abducted by d 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 from our closest neighbours Kenya and Tanzania. The sun rose and set whilst blood of the Acholis run free.

A Brilliant Genocide!

[johnfb-87983 · 17 October 2016]

I was honoured by an invite to attend the Raindance Festival in London to the opening of this documentary. It was made by a very brave,very professional young lady called Ebony Atlanta Butler, who certainly risked a great deal to make this documentary! I have travelled Africa,i have seen the horror's in the Eastern Congo, Rwanda, CAR. I remember the previous horror's during the reign of Idi Amin. This documentary certainly exposes the GENOCIDE being inflicted on the Acholi people of Northern Uganda, mainly by the government of Museveni. It exposes the arms shipments by the UK and USA governments to the Ugandan government. It exposes the totally barbaric slaughter of children, women, men, from the youngest baby's to the oldest people. It exposes the brutality of rape, torture, dis figuration and the burning alive of villagers! The world must step forward and bring another brutal African dictator to the Hague to be tried for Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes, Genocide. Thank you Ebony Butler and your crew for this enlightening "A Brilliant Genocide".