Stolen kids turned into terrifying killers

CNN ^ | 2/12/07 | Ann O'Neill

[AnnaZ]

Stolen kids turned into terrifying killers

POSTED: 9:42 a.m. EST, February 12, 2007

Story Highlights

• There are more than 250,000 child soldiers fighting around the world
• Children are often brainwashed and drugged before they are forced to fight
• Their vulnerability can allow warlords to make them into coldblooded killers
• Child advocates see some signs of progress, but a long way to go

By Ann O'Neill
CNN

(CNN) -- Warlords are forcing children in conflicts around the world to become killing machines -- nothing more than what one child advocate calls "cannon fodder."

Some children are kidnapped from their schools or their beds, some are recruited after seeing their parents slaughtered, some may even choose to join the militias as their best hope for survival in war-torn countries...

Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill.

There is no escape for what the United Nations and human rights groups estimate are 250,000 child soldiers today. These children, some as young as 8, become fighters, sex slaves, spies and even human shields.

Sometimes their guns are taller than they are. But the child soldiers can be frighteningly cold and effective...

[AnnaZ]

Friends of mine raise money for one man, Sam Childers, who has dedicated his life to saving these kids and destroying Joseph Kony, one of the most heinous abductors and torturers.

In war-torn Uganda, kids only emerge at night - Dateline NBC ...

Reverend Sam Childers is the son of a Pennsylvania iron worker. Childers is a former biker who rode with the hell’s angels and he’s born again. ...
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9006024/page/2/ - 60k - Cached - Similar pages

SudanTribune article : Sudan’s Nimule Hero - Children liberator ...

Oct 7, 2005 (NIMULE, South Sudan) — With a physique like Jean Claude Van Dam, 42-year-old Sam Childers has hunted alligators in the U.S. and has smacked down miscreants in Africa . This titan, who could easily pass for Hulk Hogan’s younger brother, sold hard drugs in the late 70s and early 80s and was a rider with the Outlaws, a motorcycle gang in Florida . He has since put his notorious ways behind him and now uses his muscular prowess to save lives in Sudan and Uganda.

On a recent morning, Sam surveys the orphanage he built on the 36 acres of bush land he cleared four years ago in Nimule, South Sudan. His orphanage is a safe haven for children who are captured out of, or are lucky enough to escape from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel paramilitary group operating in Uganda and Sudan, which has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department. Though Sam’s gut is overstocked with intestinal fortitude, the terror that rages around his orphanage is so frightening that just thinking about it can send a cold shiver of electric sparks up and down his sturdy spine.

Despite the exhilarating jolt of adrenaline he feels while fighting the LRA, Sam says that if he is captured he will likely suffer an excruciating death, as he says he has been warned more than once of the LRA’s intent to brutally kill him.
www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=11969 - 27k - Cached - Similar pages

---

Joseph Kony - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Kony (b. 1962) is the head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that was until 2006 engaged in a violent campaign to establish a ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kony - 30k - Cached - Similar pages

Joseph Kony's Spirit War

Article on magic wars in Africa by Richard Petraitis.]
www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_petraitis/spirit_war.shtml - 24k - Cached - Similar pages

Uganda's Child Soldiers (Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army)

This war is hellish in that the Joseph Kony’s army recruits its soldiers ... In Lira, the name of Joseph Kony and his army of child warriors is dreaded. ...
kabiza.com/Lira-Children-Kony-Rebels.htm - 19k - Cached - Similar pages

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Profile: Ugandan rebel Joseph Kony

Notorious Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebel leader Joseph Kony, wanted by the ICC, is driven by spirits.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4320858.stm - 48k - Cached - Similar pages

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Newsnight Home | Uganda rebel leader ...

Feared Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony breaks his silence on Newsnight to deny responsibility for atrocities.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5124762.stm - 45k - Cached - Similar pages
[ More results from news.bbc.co.uk ]

[kinoxi]

They have no options. It's very sad but I still wish them dead first.

[AnnaZ]

The whole thing is absolutely horrific. And damn depressing.

[Calpernia]

Our moral values is about the only thing that keeps this human trafficking in the black market vs. the open market.

The pharm companies keep their research facilities in places like Puerto Rico and Canada to avoid FDA Regs...

Big money in body parts.

Porn industry makes a lot of money.

The sex tourism industry, big money.

Companies going off shore and using cheap labor.


http://www.lifetimetv.com/movies/originals/humantrafficking.html
Human Trafficking

[Spok]

"Children are often brainwashed and drugged"

Why did I immediately think of Ritalin, etc. and sensitivity training in some public schools?

[Jazzman1]

no doubt its Christians behind all this. Right Rosie? /sarc

[FormerACLUmember]

Yeah, just look at all the brainwashed psychotic kids coming out of marxist indocrination at our colleges and now posting on DU and MoveOn.org.

[SouthernBoyupNorth]

Truth is stranger than fiction and still the Useless Nations wrings its hands over DAFUR and does nothing. It might get messy there and interrupt the flow of human traffickers.

[DCPatriot]

There was a depiction of this in the recent film 'Blood Diamond'.

[AD from SpringBay]

And I believe the media! Sounds like a job only the U.N. can handle. Better give that world-body some more U.S. dollars, and pronto!

[Joe 6-pack]

"Sometimes their guns are taller than they are."

The UN will overlook the obvious solution to this problem...shorter guns!

[stephenjohnbanker]

Good post, as depressing as it is.

[Calpernia]

http://www.goexcelglobal.com/NJ_DefenseForce/seedshate.html
Seeds of Hatred

[gimme1ibertee]

It is extremely depressing..and every bit as scary as the legions of kids being brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers for Islamic jihad.There are few things as troubling as watching a 3-year-old say he (or she) wants to "kill Jews" and shouts,tiny fist raised,"Death to America." It is all so frustrating.

As a side note....Love your tagline!!!:D

[SlowBoat407]

Nothing new under the sun. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, tribal societies have ushered their boys into manhood with brainwashing and drugs to make them more effective and loyal fighters.

[AnnaZ]

And I believe the media! Sounds like a job only the U.N. can handle. Better give that world-body some more U.S. dollars, and pronto!

Actually, in the body of my comments I posted information about a man who goes in on his own and rescues these kids at incredibly high risk. He's been doing it long before CNN started reporting it. (And the UN can KMA.)

= )

[AnnaZ]

Why did I immediately think of Ritalin, etc. and sensitivity training in some public schools?

Because you didn't follow the link and read further?

The journey from boy or girl to killing machine follows a horrifying route of indoctrination, including being forced to execute friends and family, international organizations report.

One girl, Angela, 12, told Human Rights Watch she was told to shoot a friend when she joined Colombia's FARC guerrillas.

"I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn't hit her. So I shot again," she said. "I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said, 'You'll have to do this many more times, and you'll have to learn not to cry.' "

An indictment against Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo asserts that one of his commanders threatened to shoot a 13-year-old girl unless she tied the testicles of a prisoner with wire. She complied and the captive died.

In Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- a boy who was 11 when he was recruited to the national army, had to watch as older soldiers gunned down mothers and then killed their babies. "They swung them by their legs and smashed them against a rock. I saw it," Kim Muang Than told Human Rights Watch.

[AnnaZ]

It's overwhelming.

[AnnaZ]

Nothing new under the sun. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, tribal societies have ushered their boys into manhood with brainwashing and drugs to make them more effective and loyal fighters.

True. However, since it's the 21st century now, enough is enough.

[SlowBoat407]

Agreed.