Washington Post: In Uganda, a Fresh Start For Former Child Fighters
The children are victims of a 20-year insurgency waged by the Lord's Resistance Army, a shadowy rebel group that wants to overthrow the government and install the Ten Commandments as law. Since it was founded in the 1980s, the group has kidnapped an estimated 20,000 children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
Thousands of the children have escaped. When they return home, many suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, having witnessed brutal killings -- sometimes of a parent or sibling -- or having been raped, beaten, deprived of water and food or forced to kill, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal in March 2004.
For a previous post on Christian terrorism, check out: eric robert rudolph
1 comment:
This post made me think about that kid who is in guantanamo prison--he was only fifteen when captured and now that he is an official "adult" he is all set to be tried by military tribunal. i wonder why the child soldiers of one nation are recognized by our own press as children being forced to do something, but the child of another nation is being tried as an adult by secret military tribunal after 4 years of captivity?
(and this is, of course, assuming the kid's "guilt")
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