As I’ve mentioned before, I have a habit of watching movies that leave me emotionally overwhelmed. At least I expected it this time around, although that didn’t make Solder Child any easier to watch.
Soldier Child (1998) is a short (just under an hour) documentary about a camp in northern Uganda that rehabilitates children abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army. These kids (preteens and young teenagers) were abducted from their homes and schools, sent to southern Sudan, trained to be soldiers, and then sent back into Uganda to commit horrific crimes against their own people. The girls are given to the commanders as “wives.”
The man who filmed the documentary visited the rehabilitation center with a handheld camera and a still camera, and black-and-white images are mixed in with the video images. One of the workers translates as the children matter-of-factly tell the atrocities they were forced to witness and take part in. I had tears streaming down my cheeks through much of it.
These abductions went on for more almost twenty years, by some estimates; according to the documentary, very few families in northern Uganda were unaffected by them. The fighting is so bad in areas that entire villages have been abandoned and their inhabitants fled to IDP camps (Internally Displaced Persons; because they’re still in their own country, they’re generally not considered refugees). Apparently, though, the IDP camps aren’t entirely safe either, and every night the boys would walk several miles to bigger cities where they would be safe(r).
So . . . not entertainment, but informative. And heartbreaking.
Go suck a horse’s cock.