Mind-boggling atrocities, many committed against children, are being attested to as the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor proceeds in The Hague. Taylor has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone between 1989 and 2003 including terrorising civilians, murder, rape and the use of child soldiers.
But in Liberia this past week, Joshua Milton Blahyi, an evangelical pastor and former soldier testified before a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) about the horrific crimes he either personally committed or ordered. He admitted that more than 20,000 people might have died at his hands between 1989 and 1997 before he voluntarily stopped after receiving a vision and turned his life around.
He too might be deemed a victim, as Blahyi revealed that at the age of 11, he joined a secret society where he supposedly received magic powers that made him both invisible and invincible. He was known as “General Butt Naked” because he led a group of young soldiers who fought naked while under the influence of drugs and were notorious for their cruelty and use of magic rituals. Blahyi told the TRC: “Any time we captured a town, I had to make a human sacrifice. They [would] bring to me a living child that I [would] slaughter and take the heart off to eat it.”
Blahyi may well be charged, tried and penalised for his crimes, but knowing this has not stopped him from telling the truth.
His story, while perhaps 1,000 times worse, is reminiscent of that of UNICEF Ambassador Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, who managed to escape and get help. Beah, who has written a book about that part of his life, said it was either kill or be killed. One imagines, though, that even with the healing that appears to have taken place, these men must have their demons.
It is estimated that today there are millions of children around the world who are being taught violence or who have violence perpetrated against them. Sadly, perhaps less than one per cent of them manage to get out of these situations while they are still children, which makes for millions more unstable adults down the road – those who live to adulthood that is.
In New Zealand, the rate of child abuse deaths has seen an upward trend over the years. UNICEF slammed that country for having “levels of child maltreatment deaths that are four to six times higher than the average for the leading countries”.
But it also noted that violence against children does not only involve the extreme cases that make the international headlines. It includes neglect in the home or in institutions, bullying, humiliating corporal punishment at school, brutality at the hands of law enforcement officers and in homes and orphanages and sexual abuse, much of which is hidden and socially approved.
Recently, there were two allegations of police brutality here against children aged ten and twelve years old in two different parts of the country, both of which the police have denied. One case, as we reported on Thursday, is about to be settled since the parents and relatives of the child, some of whom witnessed the beatings, have decided that it would not be in the best interest of the already traumatised child to have him testify in court. The second case is still in its preliminary stages.
There have been numerous accusations of brutality made against the police over the years, mostly unproven, including in cases where suspects died in custody. Given the abuse meted out to children in the wider society, it was therefore only a matter of time before allegations of brutality concerning children in custody were made; the police after all are members of society. There have also been whispers of physical abuse regarding children who are inmates at the New Opportunity Corps and charges of sex abuse at this same institution. However, proving any of these will be difficult, given the predilection of those in authority to closing ranks whenever their own are in the line of fire.
Children will continue to be physically and psychologically damaged by violence, growing up to be victims or violators, unless this issue is given a higher profile than it has now and specific remedies are sought.