How we treat our children says everything about our world. Caring for the safety, security, and needs of these precious little ones should be the top priority of our global community. Today, I want to focus on the plight of Uganda's young children who are suffering terrible cruelty at the hands of the rebel army.
Fr. Donald Dunson
Catholic priest Fr. Donald Dunson has traveled to Uganda and written about the unspeakable, unimaginable and soul wrenching sufferings of the little children there. According to Fr. Dunson the rebel army inflicts heavy brutality on these kids. The rebels scare the kids from time to time by making an example of a child, say five or six and shooting the child to death simply because the child cried. Young girls are sexually exploited in cruel ways and inherit diseases like AIDS from the perpetraters.
Fr. Dunson graciously provided me with access to the manuscript for his latest project as explained by Laura McBride his assistant:
"I am attaching files containing the current manuscript for his upcoming book, which will be published in August or September of this year. The book is tentatively entitled "Victim, Soldier, Child: The Loss of Innocence in Uganda."
"Father Dunson has also published a book entitled "No Room at the Table" that documents the plight of the vulnerable children of the world. It is published by Orbis Books and is available there or at most booksellers. Note that all of the royalties from the sale of these books directly benefit children in Uganda.
I plan to post the various chapters of this manuscript in pieces through several individual blogs.
Fr. Dunson is a professor of Systematic Theology at St. Mary Seminary in Cleveland, OH. He can be contacted at: rev.dhdunson@yahoo.com
We start with the Final Introduction and of course please remember that this work belongs to Fr. Dunson exclusively and I pray that one by one we can pay it forward. A warning, this account is graphic and will make you cry..............
Let there be respect for the earth
Peace for its people
Food for the hungry
Comfort for the poor
Freedom for the downtrodden
Solace for the broken-hearted
Love in our lives
Delight in the good
Forgiveness for past wrongs
And from now on
A new beginning
(Millennium Resolution: Uganda Martyrs University)
My name is Samuel. In the course of my short life all I have ever wanted is enough food to be free from want and a world at peace so my family and I might flourish. These treasures seemed to always elude us. We had tenderness and love in our home, but very little food. The elders in our village remember a time, before the war, when food was plentiful. I long to have lived in a time of peace.
I want to tell you about myself. You should know more about me than just the terror engulfing the final days of my life. I am repelled by the prospect that I might be remembered by how I died and not by how I lived.
Where I lived in northern Uganda there was a madness that seemed all- pervasive. All around us the conflict and divisions that reigned supreme placed the youngest and the most vulnerable in the greatest jeopardy. Although our parents never stopped struggling to protect us from the guerilla warfare that encircled our lives, their best efforts failed over and over again. Our government seemed busy with many tasks other than trying to forge peace, and the rest of the world community closed their eyes to us. Perhaps this insane war that targeted children was too bizarre and bewildering a problem to confront. I also harbor suspicions that maybe, in the judgment of some, Africa's children are deemed disposable.
The bonds of family love made life rich for me. I believe that the bond of attachment to those whom we love is the most wondrous gift imaginable. This is, undoubtedly, the best part of being human. I feel that countless other members of our human family, spread across the globe, share this same conviction. It was in the circle of family love that I discovered, at a very young age, that we are all made for communion and friendship. We do not walk alone in this world. My family possessed the gift of knowing how to bring forth the best in me.
Our family home was filled with laughter and play. There was always the unwavering belief that the day would come when this guerilla war, our common enemy, would be destroyed and their efforts come to an end. We would all welcome together a new day. We were desperately poor, but we knew that we would always have each other.
My family and I do not want pity, instead we plead for solidarity. Visible and invisible ties bind together all of us who share this tiny planet. To build a more humane and peaceful world we will all need to embrace in a new way the ties that bind humanity together. My family and my homeland in northern Uganda have suffered for far, far too long. If you had heard our cries for help perhaps you would have given answer. What I know with certainty is that I possess the same thoughts, I cry and delight to the same feelings, and I yearn for the same peace and security as you. That is why I believe that you would have been a shield of defense for me, if only you had known of my perils.
I died near the beginning of my life, at age fifteen. I died young because I was unwilling to fight in a war that has ravaged my homeland for my entire life. I was conscripted into the Lord's Resistance Army, known by everyone here simply as the LRA. They threw me into hell, the hell that is guerilla warfare. I was kidnapped by rebels when I was just seven and forced to do unspeakable things. I never wanted to be a soldier. I never wanted to be trained to kill. When I could no longer do the rebels' bidding, I fled and with God's grace guiding me found my way home. The only bright new beginning for me came at my own initiative. I forced myself to have courage enough to escape from the rebel marauders who had kidnapped me from my family but who failed to make me their own.
After my escape, I returned to my home in the village of Ngai in the Gulu district of northern Uganda. For as long as I can remember I have shared a small hut on our family property with my younger brothers Lawrence and James. The night that altered our lives forever began as any other. Everyone in the family shared a meal together as was our custom. Afterward, we gathered around the outdoor fireplace to tell stories. I remained outside with Lawrence and James under the moonlit sky late into the evening. Drowsy and ready for sleep, all three of us eventually entered our hut and fell fast asleep.
The second time the rebels came for me was much worse. This time they also took my two younger brothers. James was barely ten years old and our brother Lawrence had just turned eleven. My brothers and I were always especially close. That December night my stomach churned as I saw the soldiers tie up my brothers and haul all three of us away. I knew that this would end in sorrow. I had lived with LRA rebels before and I knew first hand that they could make you do anything, anything at all. This time I had a premonition that I would likely die. What I could never have predicted is that James and Lawrence would be forced to participate in my death.
Close to midnight young men in uniforms kicked the door to our hut open. We did not panic immediately because we had an older brother who was a member of the Ugandan military. He sometimes arrived home at odd times with his soldier friends. We hoped it was simply our older brother making a dramatic entrance.
My brother Lawrence was the first to sense the danger. When he stepped outside he saw many other village boys all tied up in ropes. When James and I looked out, dread and panic seized hold of us. Our lives changed for ever. During the next seven hours we were forced-marched nonstop with many other youths. When Lawrence complained that the rope that was tied so tightly around our waists was causing him to bleed, the rebels laughed.
We walked for nearly two days, laden down with loot the rebels had stolen along the way. Lawrence remembered that I had warned him to never show fear or pain-that might incite the rebels to kill you for your weakness. During my first abduction I had seen children summarily executed simply for tears they could not hold back. To avoid showing his pain Lawrence focused on the comforting images of our home life: the water our mother warmed for us each morning, the aroma of our favorite foods, the softness of our beds, and the image of our parents' faces.
On the second day, after crossing the Aswa River, the worst thing possible came to pass. Commander Katalang was in charge of our brigade. The name Katalang means, "A large black biting ant with a sharp smell." He was the most feared of the rebel leaders. One of the girls within Commander Katalang's brigade recognized me and knew I was an escapee. As she watched me I grew more and more afraid she would betray me. And she did. She reported me to the Commander as a deserter from the LRA. The Commander decided that I was to be punished with a slow death in order to teach all the others the danger of trying to escape. Katalang ordered me stripped and then caned mercilessly. I was then left alone the entire day to cry myself hoarse in my excruciating pain. On that day, my last on earth, I learned that dying alone is even worse than dying young. I felt abandoned not just by my family, but by all of humanity.
That night was one of the darkest ever-there didn't even seem to be any stars. Because it was so dark, Lawrence was able to crawl to where I had been left to die. I groaned at the slightest touch as he reached out to me. Warm tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on my broken body. My pain was excruciating but I still had much of my wits about me. I admonished my brother for crying for I knew all too well the price he would pay for his tears. My last words to Lawrence were a soft, nearly inaudible whisper: "Go back to the rest of the group and do whatever the commanders tell you, even if they tell you to kill me. Do it or they will kill both of us. And make sure you tell James."
At first light a furious Commander Katalang found I was still alive. He ordered all the newly abducted youth to bite me, a teenage traitor, to death. My brother Lawrence gasped out loud at the unthinkable but he also remembered my last words to him about what to do if this moment ever came to pass. He participated with all the others in biting my body until he could no longer recognize that I was his brother. There were so many people biting every inch of my body that I quickly lost consciousness.
It was at that moment that Lawrence most wanted our mother. She always seemed to know what to do when others were in pain. My younger brother felt that our mother could somehow save all of us from this monstrous evil. It had always seemed to us that nothing could defeat her. Yes, she would know precisely what to do.
The rebels had taken James to sleep in a place away from the others that night. Therefore Lawrence never had the chance to pass on my final instructions. But James had seen Lawrence biting me and he took it as a signal that this is what he was supposed to do.
Lawrence's dominant and recurring thought during this unbearable ordeal was that he wished I would open my eyes so that we could see each other one last time. Lawrence bit ever so slightly at my ears to be within my eyesight in case I opened my eyes. He knew my heart and was convinced that I would find great solace in seeing the face of someone I loved at the moment of death.
But I never opened my eyes.
Both Lawrence and James eventually followed my example and dared to escape. They fled the clutches of the LRA on two separate days. The triumphant moment of their childhood was when they first saw each other in a rehabilitation center and realized they had both made it out alive. Today, they are inseparable, just as the three of us had been in the past.
What remembrances will they take into the future from the time in our childhood when we all stepped into hell? Will it be the exhilarating remembrance of their daring escape from that dark place, with God's hand guiding them? Or will it be the nightmarish remembrances of what happened to me and their part in my death?
It is never possible to leave the past behind. No, we carry it with us. I carried my family's love, especially the love of Lawrence and James, on the journey I made from this world to the next.
What will my brothers Lawrence and James carry into their futures and remember about me? Their involuntary participation in my death will likely tower over everything else that happened to them. I fear for them. I suspect they have scars that remain hidden from others, scars that have penetrated deep into their psyches. I dread the thought that my brothers may never heal. No one should ever have to face such dark memories. I do not hold them accountable. They did what I asked them to do because I had seen there is no escaping the evil of the rebels. Still, it hurt me to see them join in the events that ended my life.
My body has never been found. This saddens my whole family and compounds their grief.
(The events that chronicle the story of Samuel on these pages are all true. What I have added are only the emotions and moral convictions I believe Samuel held. These emotions and convictions have been gathered from all the other children, like Samuel, who were thrown into this LRA war and have lived to tell the rest of the world their stories.)
Letting Humanity Be Our Bond
As a missionary priest working in Uganda, I wept when I first heard the story of Samuel. I had never encountered such inhumanity, nor could I fathom that such brutality would ever be unleashed on children. As I made my way through the war zone of northern Uganda, I heard hundreds of similarly shocking stories from children whose young lives had been shattered by events far beyond their power to control. All of them forcefully revealed one truth that had never been part of my life: the world is a dark and dangerous place for children.
Everything in my life experience seems to have disproved this statement. Growing up in a large, happy family I always felt protected and prized. By day, there was great camaraderie with my five brothers and our friends and we always watched out for one another. Each night our mother would tuck the six of us into bed with a kiss, a prayer, and a gentle touch. Without fail, our father would then enter the room to check on us and to whisper goodnight. Grandmother was last to enter the bedroom to sprinkle her grandchildren and our beds with holy water. The sensation of the cold water on my face was a message that even God was watching over me and gracing my life in unknown ways.
By contrast, in my travels in East Africa I have encountered terrifying perils that engulf children's lives in horrific ways. On our planet, during our watch, children have become the new face of war. The arming of children has become one of the worst evils of the modern world; the existence of child soldiers represents an absolute defeat for humanity. I fear that in the future when only memories of our time remain, will others wonder of us: "How could they have tolerated the brutal, forced conscription of children to kill?" The future will likely question our very humanity.
During the last two decades in conflict-plagued northern Uganda more than thirty thousand children have been kidnapped from their families and thrown into bloody guerilla warfare. The Lord's Resistance Army, one of the world's most treacherous rebel brigades, opposes the government of Uganda, a land-locked nation in east central Africa. On my annual trips to this largely forgotten war zone, I've chronicled the stories of many abducted youths who have been forced to fight and kill or die if they refuse. They are victims of circumstance who have suffered greatly as they heard shouts of "Kill, or be killed."
Many of the profoundest lessons of life come to us in story, in narrative. As we listen to the events in the lives of others we gain clarity and insight into our own lives and our place in God's family. We begin to look at the world through the eyes of another person and, gradually, we may also come to see our world through the eyes of the Other. Such solidarity invariably leads to greater compassion on our part, as the God in whom we believe is compassionate.
The narratives of this book tell of tragic episodes in the lives of those who live at a great distance from us. It is possible to dismiss their stories as remote and utterly removed from our experience. But we do this at grave peril to ourselves and to the future of humanity.
It is a fact that extremely vulnerable youth have been kidnapped and placed in a tragic trap that offered little hope for survival. In an instant they lost the companionship of everyone who had loved them. They immediately became part of a rebel group that wanted to use them to satisfy its own ends. What unfolded was a tragedy of epic proportions. Direct knowledge of this tragedy bears a moral responsibility for each of us: We must question who we have become as a global family. How frayed are the ties that bind us to each other in the human family if we allowed so many children to be victimized in this way? Each person who reads these narratives should ask, "What resources do I possess to counter the forces of such a monstrous evil that transforms innocent children into efficient killing machines?"
You will come to know these children intimately. You will learn precisely what they endured and how their lives were devoured by malicious persons with greater strength. You will learn how they survived, against all odds, and the price they paid. Their survival has had enormous physical, psychological, and spiritual consequences, and no one can estimate the terrible cost of their moral diminishment. And that is part of the terrible price extracted from the child soldiers of Gulu who were forced to maim and to kill innocent persons. One child soldier who escaped said, "this war had burned a hole in my soul and changed me forever." Moral diminishment is also a price we all pay for living in a world where so many of our children are denied our protection and irreparably harmed as a result.
We remain face to face with the perplexing fact that the youth of the LRA are both innocent victims and guilty perpetrators. Still, these children who have had the worst of the world thrown at them will likely capture your heart, as they did mine. As an eyewitness to their plight I can testify today that it is an impossible to turn away from them and remain true to your own best self. I have looked upon their faces and searched in their eyes. Before a word is uttered, their bodies and their spirits shout out to all of us, pleading, "Forgive me the evil I have been forced to do." "Protect me." "Love me back into life." Those who have unleashed violence upon them engaged not only in murder of their physical bodies, but also attempted to kill the souls of the youth abducted into the rebel brigade. It is not surprising at all that some survivors seem to be among the walking dead.
They wait for our answer. It will reveal as much about ourselves as it does about them. I have to ask myself what kind of wisdom and light can our Christian faith bring to bear on the very darkest corners of the universe.
Adam and Eve, our first parents, had a truly original discovery of each other. When first they gazed upon each other, they discovered two irrefutable truths: they knew they were mysteriously different from all other creatures they encountered on the earth and that they were each other's equals. All of Adam and Eve's children have shared in these same God-given treasures that accompany being human. The quest of the LRA to dominate others and its efforts to reduce its captives to animals were destined from the outset to failure. It is simply impossible to step out of humanity, and that is precisely what the LRA rebels asked their captives to do.
The core conviction of our Christian anthropology is that every human being is created imago dei, in the very likeness of God. This is stamped on our personhood prior to any achievement or merit of our own. It is God's free gift that can never be denied or negated. Such dignity cannot be destroyed by anyone, including ourselves. Christian faith compels its adherents to look upon all other persons, regardless of whether they are among the guilty or the innocent, not simply with our own eyes and our own feelings. No, it is the perspective of the Jesus the redeemer that matters most. Jesus Christ, the only truly innocent person ever to have walked the earth, took upon himself the guilt of us all. He did this from love and solidarity with God's creation.
Pope John Paul II has preached and taught in a most compelling way of the solidarity that exists among us who have been graced with the imago dei. To the ancient question found in the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, "Am I my brother's keeper?"(Gen. 4), John Paul gives a resounding yes. In his encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis he describes clearly what solidarity ought to entail for all of us who seek to be faithful. He writes that solidarity "is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all."[1]
This manuscript will probe the bonds of solidarity, both visible and invisible, that join us to each other, and especially to the children who, by victim of circumstance, have had to bear the most crushing burdens in the human family.
[1] Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis (December 30, 1987), 38. (Italics in original.)
