Consider this…
Rebels arrive in your village. Your parents and the parents of your neighbours are beaten, speared and bludgeoned to death in front of you and your friends.
Everyone between the age of 8 and 16 is rounded up. Then, loaded on your backs with loot taken from your own families you are force-marched across the country. The abuses continue. You watch friends murdered for lagging behind and their corpses left to rot where they fall or are thrown into the surrounding bushes.
The captives and their captors finally arrive in the rebel camps, where the former undergo a strict regime of forced labour, deprivation and punishment. Girls are raped or forced to become the “wives” of rebel commanders. Even those not yet in their teens are not spared. Any unsuccessful attempts to escape are brutally punished. Some succeed, but many never reach home.
This is a real story.
