Former child soldier battles horrific memories
|
| ||||||||||
L'Express (Port Louis)
February 22, 2005
Posted to the web February 23, 2005
Emma Graham-Harrison
Port Louis
To a hungry 8-year-old runaway in Uganda, the host of children marching on a makeshift parade ground looked like a tempting group of new friends.
In fact, they were soldiers drilling in deadly earnest, and China Keitetsi's decision to join them spelled the end of her brief childhood.
|
|
Within six years of joining the rebel group fighting to overthrow former Ugandan President Milton Obote in the 1980s, Keitetsi learned to kill, torture, see her friends die in battle, endure repeated sexual assault and become a mother.
Eventually forced to flee after falling out with a senior official, she wrote an autobiography to try to exorcise her demons, although the book doesn't touch on all of her horrors. "There are things I can't talk about, and which I didn't write about ... there are things you wish you never have to remember," the slight 28-year-old told Reuters before the launch of a Spanish edition.
The unexpected success of her book "Child Soldier: Fighting for my life" has catapulted Keitetsi into a role as ambassador for the estimated 300,000 child soldiers, taking on roles for UN children's rights group UNICEF and international human rights watchdog Amnesty International.She said she hoped to save other children from the scars she bears from her years in the National Resistance Army which helped to bring current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to power.
Museveni has denied reports of child soldier recruitment in Uganda. His government has denounced Keitetsi as a fraud, who joined the army as an adult. She says she lost all her possessions in her flight and has nothing to prove her story.
|
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for governments and rebel groups using children as soldiers to be punished after a new UN report identified 11 countries ranging from Sri Lanka to Colombia and Somalia where they are sent into battle.
Government forces from Uganda also appear on the list, and the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child soldiers said in 2004 that underage recruitment probably remained a problem there. Museveni's government is embroiled in a fight with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the North led by self-styled mystic Joseph Kony. The LRA have been accused of kidnapping children to use as frontline fighters, sex slaves and porters.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
