From School Girl To Child Soldier

[Gurjeet_Kaur]

Vaheguroo Jee Ka Khalsa!!!! Vaheguroo Jee Kee Fateh!!!!!

As Skhs it is our duty to serve humanity and fight injustice wherever it is needed most (deg and teg). This does not apply only to injustice towards Sikhs, or in Punjab, but also anywhere else in the world. Most cultures, not just Sikhs, seem to be wanting justice only when it directly affects them as a people. Everyone knows of how Guru Tegh Bahadur Jee sacrificed his life for something that did not affect his people, but rather, the Hindu people. These are the very same people who were blatantly condemned for following ludicrous rituals, yet Guru Tegh Bahadur Jee did not discriminate them because of this. He only wanted to see justice done for all of humanity and wished to restore the right of religious freedom to the hindus– something that we inadvertently take for granted today.

Taking this example into consideration, we need to fight for justice of humanity – be it in Haiti, the United States, or India. In this day and age, many people aren’t even allowed to LIVE their lives the way they want to, let alone be well off in them.

Read the story of trial that a 14-year-old girl, younger than most of us here, had to face. She lived a life of torture and pain for seven months, at some points, trying to commit suicide and even being buried alive. Amazingly, she lived to write about it and share her story with the world.

PLEASE read below:

http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/Newslette...dex.asp?nlid=24

When Akallo Grace Grall was 14 years old, soldiers

of the Lord's Resistance Army came in the night to her Boarding School in Northern Uganda. That night the frightened schoolgirl and 138 of her classmates forcibly joined the ranks of one of the world's most bizarre, sadistic and ferocious armies, an army largely composed of children. This is her own story in her own words.

From School Girl To Child Soldier

By Akallo Grace Grall

They came at midnight, their torch fires bright in our dormitory windows. Then the furious knock of rifle butts against our door. The Lord's Resistance Army came inside. Some were as young as I was then, 14 years old. Within an hour they tied up the girls in my dormitory and forced us into the cold night, all 139 of us. It felt unreal. No stars shone. Dawn was far off. No moon lit our way. Only the dark clouds witnessed our fate. However, not the cold, not the fear, not even my resignation prepared me for the horrors that we were yet to experience.

For the last 17 years war had been no stranger among us in northern Uganda. Our capture could have happened on any other day, but this particular day, a day of celebration and singing in my country? Such irony. For October 9, 1996, was Independence Day. That night, led like slaves through the muddy banana plantations, we left our independence behind. My journey, from a schoolgirl to a child soldier, had begun.

We walked the whole night. Sister Rachele, the deputy headmistress of St. Mary’s College for Girls, had hidden in the banana plantation behind our school, until first light. In the morning, tracking our footprints, Sister Rachele caught up with us.

“You will not leave here; we’ll either kill you or rape you,” our guards told us, when Sister Rachele first came into sight. But the nun was not intimidated. She walked by our sides the whole day, pleading with the commander, Lagira, for our release. At last, Lagira released 109 girls.

I was among the 30 he clung to. That night, they packed the 30 who remained into a tiny

round hut that barely had enough space for a single bed. We had nothing to eat. Most of us were captured wearing only our thin cotton nightdresses. We had lost our slippers and shoes in the mud, and our feet were already blistered. There was no sleep for us that night, only tears, rivers of tears.

After a month of wandering through Gulu and Kitgum — looting, killing, and abducting more children — they split those of us from Aboke into two groups. I was among the group ordered to march north a week later, following the flow of the Nile into Sudan. Barefoot, I tried to ease the blisters on my soles by wrapping them with banana leaves. I was already feverish, I felt nauseous, and often had diarrhea. I was too weak to walk fast. But even hardened terrorists were not spared. Those who slackened their pace were promised death by bayonet, so that they “can rest forever.”

When government troops in pursuit attacked our group, shooting indiscriminately, my fear gave me the strength to continue walking. After four more days and nights on the march, starving and aching for water, we reached the main training camp in Sudan, where the Muslim government in Khartoum supported the Lord's Resistance Army with weapons and uniforms.

We had to assemble before the leader of the terrorist movement, Joseph Kony, on the parade ground. He distributed us amongst his commanders, as child-wives. “Aboke girls should forget about going back to Uganda,” Kony told our “husbands.” “They should be trained to fight.” A week later, the commanders gave us AK47 assault rifles and taught us to dismantle, clean, and assemble them. “Hunger," they told us, "will teach you to shoot.” They were right. Hunger taught me how to fight. We raided villages looking for food and water. The commanders, our so-called husbands, provided nothing. In the long drought, we were forced to eat lizards, rats, wild fruits, leaves, roots, and even soil. We walked three miles from the camp to fetch water. And even then we had to dig in the sand, with

our fingers, and wait hours for moisture to surface. Many could not wait. The path to the waterhole was strewn with corpses.

My life in Sudan was beyond description. Seven months after my capture I was no longer myself. I was a walking skeleton with rotting feet. I escaped death by a narrow margin many times. Twice, I tried to shoot myself, and would have succeeded, if a fellow captive had not snatched away the rifle. Once, I fainted from thirst. Thought to be another corpse, I was buried alive; when I came to, I dug my way out of my own grave.

One day, the Ugandan Army attacked our training camp in Sudan. After a long battle, I found myself alive, under a tree amidst the razed huts. I was not even bruised. Everybody else had fled, and I was alone. I stood up, and walked out across the arid plains. On my way home, 300 miles away, I persuaded eight other girls I met to escape with me. After a long, perilous journey, we reached safety on Good Friday, 1997. I had been in captivity exactly seven months. But the horrors still followed me: When I returned to St Mary's College for Girls, I received hurtful remarks from a few other students. But the worst was when my stepmother called me “Kony’s wife.”

“You are no longer fit to go to school,” she said. “Just get married. Your dad should not pay your school fees. He is my husband. You should get your own.” But I went to school anyway.

In 1999 I graduated from junior high and joined St. Catherine’s, in Lira, for my last two years of high school. But I did not perform well in my final examinations. My peers were not as understanding as my classmates St. Mary's had been, and often taunted me. Still, I made it to college. After I graduate from Ugandan Christian University, where I'm studying communication, I hope to start my master's degree. Since I first enrolled here, I have not had much trouble — not many people know my background. On campus, I've found peace, comfort, and love.

Late last year, I journeyed back t

o Lira, where my father lives, a town in the thick of the war. I spent my Christmas vacation talking to children at a crowded rehabilitation center, named after Rachele, the nun who tried to rescue us. They also escaped the Lord's Resistance Army, but are not yet safe. Following a massacre in Lira in February, more than 200 refugees rest forever.

I have seen heads smashed. I have seen people beaten until their sockets swallow their eyes. I have survived hunger and assaults. I have survived live burial. But this is not the survival I want for my people. After 17 years, we want our lives back. At the rehabilitation center I talked to a boy of 7 years, his bullet wounds, oozing puss. I don't want anybody to go through our pain again. The time has come; we must stop this war.

Meanwhile, In Burundi

In Burundi, a whole generation of children, often orphaned and traumatized by ten-years of conflict have been recruited into Children’s armies. Some have been abducted from their families. Others have been driven to volunteer by poverty, exclusion and family breakdown, or after witnessing atrocities. For some, soldiering has become a means of survival or a form of security.

Both the Burundian armed forces and Burundian armed political groups have recruited and used child soldiers in a variety of capacities: as porters, informants, "wives" and actual combatants. Though no reliable figures exist on the number of children who have taken part in the conflict, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), between 6,000 and 7,000 children under-18 must now be disengaged, demobilized and reintegrated into society.

Learn More about Burundi and the use of child soldiers and take action.

Deg Teg Fateh!!!

[DhadiMania]

its a sad story. well its Idi Amins fault for kicking the indians out from Uganda. I mean Uganda in the 70's was the most powerful country in all africa, then he does summat stupid and kicks the indians out. then all this civil war stuff happened.