Child Soldiers in Congo

A former child soldier abducted by the forces of Lubanga recounts his ordeal and the ordeal of rehabilitation in Congo

 "I’ve seen my friends die. Not many. At all. " Gestaing talks fast, as if telling the life of another or, simply, as if unwilling to realize that theirs is the one drawing with broken words. Talk while surfing at the same rate on your bike hiperacelerado
Made in China by building roads in Bunia, capital of Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The city is abuzz and lawless state reminiscent of Western movies. Hotels, bars and shops emerge like mushrooms: Bunia has a tremendous hurry to change skin
in the attempt, urban and economic, to erase the deep scars of a war-that of Ituri and Congo-two long and brutal. Gestaing, at best, does make up their wounds.

Now 24 and a work of motorcycle taxi driver. In 2002 the UPC militia, the Union of Congolese Patriots of Thomas Lubanga, entered his house and stole his adolescence. "The militants came to my village, north of Bunia, in the road to the mines of Mongbwalu. I
was with my mother and my sisters. My father had left us by the war. We had nothing to give, so I kidnapped. He was 14 years. " It was not the worse off. "With me also caught some kids 8 or 9 years. I was older, that helped me to survive. And besides, the
UPC did nothing to my family.They simply had to catch me, "recalls Gestaing its direct passage into adulthood.

The warlords threatened to rape children or kill their mothers or sisters, often shot in the uterus. Without doubt, the most brutal and definitive to certify the ownership change: from the military family. A Gestaing was spared this horror. Only this.

To be continued….

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Posted by Fouad Ashraf on Jul 17 2012. Filed under Africa, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry