XII
Death
Execution
The atmosphere
is dark and anonymous, void of any furnishings: the tragedy of
violence and death has no particular setting. Three individuals
stand out from the darkness: the man with a weapon, wearing no
uniform, no sign of allegiance (violence has no single owner and no
simple origin); the girl strung up by her hands; the dying man in
the foreground. The
armed man looks out beyond the painting with an expressionless air
of indifference: violence disguised as normality can touch any of us
and accomplish its ends with cruelty and indifference. |
| A reflection by Brother Bernard Couvillion |
The rector of Uganda’s Alokolum Major Seminary told this horrifying story in his Easter Sunday homily during my visit: Fifteen boys from a secondary school in the Gulu region were kidnapped by rebels and taken to their camp. One boy had the courage to escape but was soon caught. A commander convoked the other fourteen boys, putting the bound escapee in the center of them. “Escaping puts all of our lives in danger.” He held out a bayonet. “Here. Each of you will take a turn stabbing him until he is no longer moving.” The first boy to get the bayonet hesitated. “Don’t refuse or you’ll be next.” Students stabbing their classmate to bloody death is
only one chapter in the nightmare of boy soldiers. After the
Liberian peace agreement of 1995, a 15-year old “major,” a
five-year veteran and commander of a fifty-member unit of soldiers
younger than he, came forward. His unit’s job was to creep into
enemy camps at night, cut off a few heads and retreat, planting
their grisly booty at roadblocks. Still today, some 15,000 boy
soldiers are counted in Liberia’s army. Their superiors supply
them with an amphetamine known as “bubbles” to steel them for
battle, and reward them with marijuana. (Time, Dec. 4, 1995) Unicef
estimates that 200,000 boys under 16 are fighting in 25 countries.
Their number is increasing because light weapons now enable children
to be proficient killers. An AK-47 can be stripped and reassembled
by a ten-year-old. In some ways, children make better soldiers than
adults: they are easier to intimidate and they do as they are told;
they are less likely to run away and they do not demand pay. Girls face the added trauma of sexual abuse. One young
girl in Uganda, Concy aged 14, had been abducted and told the
following story: “In Sudan we were distributed to men and I was
given to a man who had just killed his woman. I was not given a gun,
but I helped in the abductions and grabbing of food from villages.
Girls who refused to become rebels’ wives were killed in front of
us to serve as a warning.” A
15-year old girl who escaped wrote this message to Amnesty
International: “Please do your best to tell the world what is
happening to us, the children. So that other children don’t have
to pass through this violence.” |
| We give voice to the prayer of boys and girls pressed into war |
|
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You are far from my distress.
Like water I am poured out, disjointed are all my bones. My heart has
become like wax, it is melted within my breast. Parched as burnt clay
is my throat, my tongue cleaves to my jaws. Many dogs have surrounded
me, a band of the wicked beset me; they tear holes in my hands and my
feet and lay me in the dust of death. I can count every one of my
bones. These people stare at me and gloat; they divide my clothing
among them, they cast lots for my dress. |