The rebels prefer children of fourteen to sixteen, but at times they abduct children as young as eight or nine, boys and girls alike. They tie the children to one another, and force them to carry heavy loads of looted goods as they march them off into the bush. Children who protest or resist are killed. Children who cannot keep up or become tired or ill are killed. Children who attempt to escape are killed.
Their deaths are not quick--a child killed by a single rebel bullet is a rarity. If one child attempts to escape, the rebels force the other abducted children to kill the would-be escapee, usually with clubs or machetes. Any child who refuses to participate in the killing may also be beaten or killed.
... it has eight years since that report was released and the Lord's Resistance Army has still not been brought to justice. They are still mutilating men, women, and children. They are still slicing children's ears and lips off. They are still raping and kidnapping chidren. They are still forcing women to cut-off appendages of daughters and sons at gunpoint.
A search at Human Rights Watch is an excercise in frustration. See year after year HRW release report after report of the horror committed by the LRA. Here's the most recent.
But you do not hear much about this on the news ... print or television. It is such a terrible shame that the power of the press is not being used to help these people suffering such misery and injustice, so I must commend CBN for bringing this issue to light, and for also speaking out on the genocide in Darfur, which goes, for the most part, unnoticed here in America.
Here HRW explains what the average person can do to help end this atrocity.
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