Demonstration set against child soldiers

PROVO — About 285 people are expected to attend a 12-hour demonstration Saturday against child soldiers in Uganda who are said to be kidnapped from their homes to fight in the African nation's civil war.

The demonstration, called the Global Night Commute, will be at Farrer Elementary School, 100 N. 600 East. The event will start at 7:30 p.m. and continue until 7 a.m. Sunday.

Similar events will be held in some 130 cities across the world.

Students at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College hope awareness of the event will help with awareness of the situation. They are forming a group to address the issue.

For the first couple hours, demonstrators will write government officials and ask them to help stop the war and violence against children.

At 9 p.m., organizers will count demonstrators and film and photograph them. At 10 p.m., demonstrators will begin to sleep.

They will begin to return home at 7 a.m. the next day.

The event is named after the commutes that thousands of Ugandan children embark upon every night from rural villages to cities where they can receive some protection from rebel forces that allegedly kidnap the children and train them as soldiers.

The children return home to their families each morning and begin the cycle again each night. A civil war between rebel forces and the government has waged for 17 years.

Three college-aged men made a documentary, "Invisible Children," to educate the world about the war in Uganda.

For more information about the movie, civil war, and Global Night Commute, visit invisiblechildren.com.