| STORY OF TITI A LITTLE GIRL
SOLDIER |
Titi Bayoh is a girl soldier in Sierra Leone. Her story is
told by Father Bepi Berton who has worked for years to save children
involved in war. For seven years Titi fought with the rebel soldiers
of RUF. More than once she tried to escape but she was always caught
and punished.
Until the mark of the rebels was engraved on her chest. So littla
Bonda, her real name, helped the women prepare food in the camps and
carry provisions during the long night transfers. After several years
when it was time for Bondo-Titi to move up a grade from kitchen maid
to concubine for the rebels, during an unsuccessful rebel attack she
managed to escape and return to her family in Freetown. The rebels’
mark was removed from her chest with surgery but a large scar remains.
Titi’s story has a happy ending: she returned home. But for
most child soldiers to take up a machine gun means the end of childhood
for ever.
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More than 300,000 minors under 18 are
used in wars which bloody the earth. Thousands of little soldiers
have killed and been killed in recent decades in regular armies and
in rebel troops. Most of them were between 15 and 18 years of aged
but many recruits were as young as ten and in general the age tends
to be lower as time passes.
Once again Africa is top of the list in this phenomenon: to mention
just one case, in April 2003 in Maputo the government spoke of 120,000
military under 18. While in Asia, America and Europe not lacking are
situations of recruiting and training of boy soldiers.
This is a long story. In the past 25 years it has been seen that children
have been present in wars in 25 different countries. Although often
officially said to be present as “porters” for fighting
troops, missionaries in particular have denounced the use of minors
in violent combat in Sierra Leone.
In Ethiopia girls too are recruited and they are said to be 25-30%
of the Opposition forces. At times children ask to be enrolled to
escape poverty or life on the streets: in 1997 about 5,000 minors
joined the army in Democratic Congo after hearing a call on the radio.
In one of the longest forgotten wars in the post-war period, is the
endless combat between ethnic groups in Myanmar where children are
made to run along mined territory: animals for slaughter, the more
ferocious and horrifying imaginable system of de-mining.
Yet the names of these little ones will never be known, because in
this and many other situations, minors are sold, purchased, abandoned,
abused, violated because their voices do not count: no one will hear
them, no one will them.
And worst of all, although denounced, the phenomenon has grown in
recent years because many wars are said to be ethnic, religious or
nationalist.
War Lord who pull the strings of the armies in the field have no respect
for the articles contained in the Geneva Convention on the Rights
of Children, indeed they find it particularly advantageous to use
these warriors who will fighting for only food and lodging.
Light firearms can be used even by ten year olds who can be trained
to fire an AK-47 like any adult.
Children kill and children are killed.
In either case they are victims. In the last ten years more than two
million children were killed in war and more than six million were
mutilated or seriously wounded, one million children lost their parents
who were killed or lost in chaos of war. About 20 million were made
homeless. Every year about 9,000 children are mutilated or killed
by anti-personnel mines. |
IN-DEPHT STUDY