Every day at dusk, thousands of terrified northern Ugandans, the majority of them children, travel to the relative safe place to spend the night. Some carry thin blankets and a bit of food, but most have nothing.
In the eyes of desperate parents, the alternative is far worse. Staying at home puts the children at risk of kidnap, torture or murder by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
Negotiations amid the Government of Uganda and the Lords Resistance Army is very near to collapse. And this would have direct impact on the children who would once again gasp in the fear of physical, emotional and sexual violence that subjugated the 20 year old conflict.
Grim statistics shows
1. 1,500 children are still in LRA ranks, and at least 10,000 children remain unaccounted for.
2. Some 20,000 to 25,000 were abducted, made to work as sex slaves, child soldiers and porters of weaponry and often forced to mutilate or kill friends and relatives.
3. Tens of thousands of others became ‘night commuters’, walking long distances every night into towns to try to avoid brutal attack.
Main thing
Failed escape from the LRA is usually met with brutal death at the hands of LRA commanders. Despite this risk, thousands of children have made successful escapes. However, physical dangers and social barriers haunt escaped child soldiers even after escape.
Natives witness the slow genocide, a holocaust of children every now and then. But has the world realized it or not, that is the question still lingering.
