“The rebels would force them to eat human flesh or kill a relative, if they tried to escape. We found them on the side of roads, shocked. They have been victims of appalling physical and psychological violence. Now they are safe, ad we are trying to give them back what years of war and suffering denied them: a normal life”.

PeaceReporter spoke with Richard Kinyera, director of SOS rehabilitation centre in the village of Gulu, in the north of Uganda. His voice is the one of a resigned man. Together with his collaborators, he has welcomed more than 150 children escaped from the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army) militia rebels, that have been opposing President Museweni’s government for years. Led by the enigmatic Joseph Kony, who claims to be possessed by the Holy Spirit and to have supernatural powers on all those serving him, the LRA has kidnapped since 1986 about 10,000 children, as well as several women and girls from the northern regions of Uganda. And it’s from bordering Sudan, the retreating rebels’ last stronghold, that the first waves of human relicts of this bloody guerrilla have arrived: uprooted children, worn out by a long and exhausting conflict, born slaves without a family.

Some international and local non-governmental organisations have moved to help them, creating a reception and recovery centre to give them hope. “We have some rehabilitation programs, – adds Kinyera – these children suffer from deep depression and indelible psychic traumas. The girls we found have a long past of sexual violences by the soldiers. It’s disconcerting, especially if you think that the older ones are younger than 15”. The young ex-soldiers have the chance of rehabilitating themselves through psychotherapies and medical cures, and of reedeming themselves with a work placement and the learning of a job, which would open them the doors of a new future.

Recently, Kampala’s Makerere University, in cooperation with the association Ugandan Art for Peace, has organised a disturbing exposition of some drawings made by some of the child soldiers. Pencils and pastels scribbling militiamen butchering women and children, assault rifles, pools of blood, agonising bodies among the huts.

“These drawings are the mirror or what the children feel inside”, says Tumusiine Dan, Ugandan Art for Peace director and promoter of the exhibition. “Horror, dejection, anger, but above all a lot of sadness”. “Here in Gulu they have found a house, a family and somebody who believes in them. This is certainly a beginning”, insists with a deep voice Simon, a collaborator of the rehabilitation centre.

It’s estimated that other thousands of them, still in the LRA’s hands, could arrive in the next months. Other institutes might wait for them, but only if donations and funds will arrive from abroad, as without them their future is uncertain.

Pablo Trincia