"It was a dark time: the RUF was abducting children from their villages, getting them high on poyo (homemade palm wine), marijuana and heroin, and training them to kill. I later heard from a Jesuit priest who tried to rehabilitate these child-soldiers that they made excellent killers because, under the age of nine, they had not yet developed a full moral conscience. The warlords exploited their innocence. The carnage they inflicted was unspeakable. In these raids on villages, according to interviews I did later, pieced together with testimonies from human rights investigators, soldiers forced parents to choose which of their children would be taken as fighters and which would be killed on the spot. Teenagers in gangsta-style baggy pants raped and plundered, taking girls as young as nine as their "bush wives.""
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People from New JerseyWomen authors from the United StatesWomen journalists from the United StatesGuggenheim FellowsWomen born in the 1960s
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
See Sierra Leone Civil War.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Janine_di_Giovanni
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Janine di Giovanni
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