Child soldier talks of death

By RACHEL IRWIN

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The testimony would have been chilling coming from anyone. But it was especially horrifying coming from a young boy.

“We would jump over bodies,” he said, describing one battle he had been involved in when he was about 11 years old. “We had killed a lot of people.”

Judges at the International Criminal Court have withheld the name and concealed the identity of the witness who claims he served as a child soldier under the command of militia leader Thomas Lubanga in the Congo.

Lubanga is charged with recruiting, conscripting and using child soldiers under the age of 15 to fight in the ethnic conflicts that raged in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002 and 2003.

Unable to confront the witness directly, Lubanga sat stone-faced as he watched the youth testify on a computer screen.

Kidnapped

The youth described the day in late 2002 when soldiers belonging to Lubanga’s militia kidnapped him and five of his friends on their way home from school.

“[The soldiers] said, ‘You, children, we’re going to take you,”’ he said. “If anyone tried to talk, they were beaten.” The beatings continued until they arrived at the militia’s camp, the youth said. And once their military training began, they were beaten again if they failed to complete a training exercise or tried to escape.

The youth described how the child soldiers often had no shelter and were exposed to the elements. “They didn’t care whether we had enough to eat or not,” he said.

All that did matter, he said, was that the recruits became proficient using their weapons. It was then that they were given military uniforms.

Catholic mission attack

He described several battles he participated in, including an attack on a Catholic mission.

“We went to the mission and killed those there, also the priests,” he said. “We cut their mouths off and destroyed their faces.” The youth said he only gained his freedom after his father located him and was able to pay a ransom to win his release from the militia.

The youth’s testimony was followed by that of a former high-ranking member of Lubanga’s militia, whose identity was being concealed by the court.

The unnamed witness told the court that Lubanga and other high-ranking officials in the militia preferred to use child soldiers as their bodyguards.

“When you have a young person as a bodyguard, he has no other family member to care for,” the witness said.

Lubanga’s trial is continuing.

X Rachel Irwin is a reporter in The Hague who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization in London that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services