200 view documentary

About 200 IU students, faculty and guests witnessed a glimpse of the children's plight of daily fear during a viewing of "Invisible Children: Rough Cut," a documentary which chronicles the stories of Northern Ugandan children seeking evening shelter from the genocidal storm raging each night across their country.\nThe film followed three "ignorant" young adult Americans as they journeyed into Darfur, Sudan to document the genocidal civil war that has cost the lives of an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 global citizens and displaced millions more into refugee camps splattered across the countryside in neighboring countries like Uganda and Chad. Finding empty Darfur villages and following fleeing Sudanese villagers, the filmmakers end up in refugee camps in Northern Uganda. \nOne overarching question posed by the documentary to illicit international response to save the Northern Ugandan children from their everyday torture was left unresolved: What would you do if you knew the Jewish Holocaust of World War II was occurring at this moment?\nStudents for Uganda committee member and senior Renee Tetrick said students can help the children of Northern Uganda beginning today, carrying through this weekend and followed by the days to come.\n"I hope students become inspired and motivated, and from motivation they move forward to action, and with that action they spend their time and talents toward a better global community," she said.\nAbducted Northern Uganda children are forced to participate in Kony's tyrannical rule, which includes a campaign of mass rape, mutilation and murder, according to the film. They are often forced to turn their weapons on one another, and all surviving Lord's Resistance Army child soldiers have witnessed a lifetime's worth of blood and brutal carnage by the time they become teenagers. \nHao Yin, an IU visiting scholar from China, said he attended the documentary to see for himself some of the genocidal-fearing faces he had only read about in newspaper stories. His wife, Linda Mao, said she was drawn to the story of human tragedy, and she wanted to know what she could do to save the Northern Ugandan children. \nSophomore Dash Voorhees, the film director for the Union Board, said the film is a good tool to bridge the gap between a student's lack of knowledge about the daily suffering of children in Northern Uganda and a student's desire to truly make a difference in the lives of hundreds to thousands of children.\nThe Gumboot Dance Troupe entertained the audience before the film, and most audience members were reduced to tears by the end of the program. Some students left before the show was finished.\nRepresentatives from Invisible Children, the group responsible for the documentary and an international campaign to save the Northern Ugandan children, asked students and other film attendees to donate their time, creativity and money to help better the lives and secure the future of children dying every day from terror, torture, poverty and disease. The group is hosting a Global Night Commute at 8 p.m. Saturday at the intersection of North Jordan and Fee Lane, in which participants will walk to the city of Bloomington center to sleep under the stars in remembrance and solidarity of the Northern Ugandan children hiking to safe places every night of the week.\nAbout 60 IU students have signed a pledge to participate this weekend, and caring community members attending the event will write letters to their politicians demanding the United States pressure the United Nations to pressure the Uganda government to broker a peace deal with the LRA in the name of the children.