He trudged forward, the weight of the gun bearing down on him. With his master's orders still ringing in his ears, he crouched down slowly, making sure that he did not make any sudden movement. He propped the gun against a nearby tree so that he could adjust his sitting position. He could hear sounds of footsteps approaching. Fear crept over him as he braced himself for the act that he was about to perform.
He picked up the rifle and carefully took aim. He struggled to keep his balance due to the weight of the gun. Through the eyepeice, he saw a man carrying a little girl through the woods. She was a tiny thing, he said to himself, barely four years old. He re-adjusted his position so he could see the mans face, fear clearly visible on his face. The man looked as if he had been running for hours, his breath was heavy and his shirt was blood stained. He held the little girl tightly to his chest, she looked like his daughter.
A tear rolled down his cheek, the sight before him reminded him of his father who used to carry him to school every morning. He liked going to school. It was the only place where he felt he was really something. The sound of a snapping twig brought him back to reality and to the daunting task ahead of him. As he set his eyes on the approaching man, an inner voice told him to just throw away the gun and run. But then he remembered his sister and cousins who were being held captive by his master. Their lives depended on him, he had to gather the courage and perform this task. But she was just a little infant, what would happen to her? He tried convincing himself that maybe his master was right, maybe blood needed to be shed so that the government would realise its mistakes and everything could go back to normal.
For him,a normal life was no longer possible. His father and mother had been taken away, he did not know if they were alive or dead. He had no family left, apart from his sister who was being held captive by the master and his men.
He heard the infant begin to cry. He carefully took aim. A knot formed in his stomach as he wrapped his little fingers around the trigger and squeezed it with all his strength. With a heavy heart, he watched as a tiny red dot appeared on the man's shirt. He fell to the ground, trying as much as possible to protect his daughter from the impact of the fall.
The gun fell from his hands as an aura of shame surrounded his soul. He felt a pat on his back. He turned around and saw his master smiling at him. 'You have done well, my son' he whispered in his ear.
Would God ever forgive me? thought the little 9 year old boy.
VOICES OF THE INNOCENT
"I had a friend, Juanita, who got into trouble for sleeping around. We had been friends in civilian life and we shared a tent together. The commander said that it didn’t matter that she was my friend. She had committed an error and had to be killed. I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again. The grave was right nearby. I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said,”You did very well. Even though you started to cry, you did well. You’ll have to do this again many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry"Angela, joined the FARC-EP in Colombia at age twelve
“Early on when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA explained to us that all five brothers couldn’t serve in the LRA because we would not perform well. So they tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until they died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old.”
Martin, recruited by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda at age twelve
"When they came to my village, they asked my older brother whether he was ready to join the militia. He was just 17 and he said no; they shot him in the head. Then they asked me if I was ready to sign, so what could I do - I didn't want to die."
A former child soldier taken when he was 13
"There was no one in charge of the dormitories and on a nightly basis we were raped. The men and youths would come into our dormitory in the dark, and they would just rape us - you would just have a man on top of you, and you could not even see who it was. If we cried afterwards, we were beaten with hosepipes. We were so scared that we did not report the rapes The youngest girl in our group was aged 11 and she was raped repeatedly in the base."
19-year-old girl describing her experience in the National Youth Service Training Program.
"They give you a gun and you have to kill the best friend you have. They do it to see if they can trust you. If you don't kill him, your friend will be ordered to kill you. I had to do it because otherwise I would have been killed. That's why I got out. I couldn't stand it any longer."
17-year-old boy, joined paramilitary group aged 7, when a street child.
Over 250,000 children are currently being used in wars. Show your support towards the innocent children who are being abused in all parts of the world.
Show your RED HAND!
For more info, visit
www.redhandday.org
4 comments:
Good story! It's saddening to hear about incidents like these.
There's this documentary coming out soon called war child, based on emmanuel jal a really good singer and previously a child soldier from Sudan. He was smuggled to Kenya. Trailer looks good.
yes should be an interesting movie, for glimpses of child soldiers and how they are trained also watch the movie 'blood diamond' .. also search for 'ishmael beah' on youtube..he was a soldier in sierra leone, and now he is in USA, he wrote a book on his experiences, very interesting interview on youtube ..
Yeaa I read abit of his book a long way gone agess back.
I got interupted watching blood diamond.. it's one of the billion things of mine that needs completeion.
Ohh and just a side thing.. I read somewhere that child suicide bombers are recruited in the palestine-Israel conflitcs. In Iraq during Saddam's time children as young as 10 were used as militants. But ofcourse that's a Saddam thing to do.
nicely written, looking fwd to the next story!..
Post a Comment