Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Interview with Kati Marton, China Keitetsi

Aired May 10, 2002 - 07:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: According to U.N. estimates, some 300,000 children are being used in dozens of armed conflicts all over the world. And this week in a special U.N. session on children, world leaders are seeking to enforce a ban on the growing exploitation of children in war, a situation especially grim in the African nation of Sierra Leone. Jeff Koinange has more from Freetown.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF KOINANGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sixteen-year-old Aruna Thullah remembers the time he used to play this game with ease. These days, he can only afford to hobble his way with pain and difficulty. Thullah's village was raided by rebels three years ago, and he watched them kill his family. Then they grabbed him and forced him to serve in their army. One day he refused to perform a task he had been ordered to carry out and paid with his leg.

But since coming to this rehab center a year ago, he has become a changed person. Instead of revenge, now he wishes some of his old comrades would come to be a part of Sierra Leone's post-war society.

ARUNA THULLAH, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER: But for me, I want them to experience the things that I experienced. I just want them to come out from the bush (ph).

KOINANGE: Thullah's rehabilitation is possible through the generosity of donors under the umbrella of Cooperazione Internazionale, an Italian NGO that's giving hope to thousands of hopeless former child soldiers. But even these caretakers admit that care and comfort aren't enough to rehabilitate what they call Africa's lost generation.

(on camera): Child rehabilitation centers like this claim to have taken more than 2,000 of the more than 10,000 child soldiers forcefully inducted into the civil war. But many caretakers here say that 's the easy part. The most difficult part, they say, is taking them from here and putting them back into the streets.

(voice-over): Take, for instance, 17-year-old Kuda Tumarah (ph). She was kidnapped by rebel soldiers two years ago and turned into, among other things, a sex slave. Such trauma (UNINTELLIGIBLE) are barely able to talk, let along play a role in a peaceful society.

And others, like 18-year-old Abubakar Savage, who admits being forced to take part in the killings of dozens of government soldiers, now spends his days making uniforms for those same troops.

(on camera): Have you changed?

ABUBAKER SAVAGE, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER: Yes, I have changed.

KOINANGE: Tell me how.

SAVAGE: How it is, and now, I don't have no problem and nobody (ph).

KOINANGE (voice-over): That's at least a start, say the workers here, getting these children to stop hating. Keeping them that way and building a civil society is the challenge that still lies before them.

Jeff Koinange, CNN, Freetown.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And we're going to talk more now about exposing children to the horrors of war and efforts to solve this global crisis. Kati Marton with the U.N. Office of Children and Armed Conflict joins us in our New York studios this morning, along with China Keitetsi, who served as a soldier in Uganda beginning when she was nine years old -- welcome to both of you.

KATI MARTON, U.N. OFFICE OF CHILDREN AND ARMED CONFLICT: Thanks, Paula.

CHINA KEITETSI, FORMER CHILD SOLDIER: Thank you.

ZAHN: How is it that you ended up in Uganda's National Resistance Army at the age of nine?

KEITETSI: I was running away from home from another situation from my step-mother who was like a devil. And then that's why I came to become a soldier. But I wasn't the only one for example.

ZAHN: So no one forced you to become a soldier...

KEITETSI: No.

ZAHN: ... at that point?

KEITETSI: No.

ZAHN: You volunteered.

KEITETSI: But how can a child volunteer? Because if I volunteer, maybe I don't know what I am doing, but you, the grown up, should know. And you should stop me from volunteering being a soldier. It wasn't my choice. It wasn't the choice that I had to become a soldier.

ZAHN: What did you see during those six years of armed conflict? KEITETSI: There were so many children younger (ph) than me. And at first, we were made to carry their belongings, ammunition and all their stuff, and make food, cook for them and look for firewood and water. But again, we were also spies. You have to spy, and many (ph) children died there, because the government's troops at the end, they learned (ph) some of our tricks (ph). And then we killed our own comrades who starved, because they had no food who stole some food. We killed them. And we killed most of the government's troops, who were captured.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Did you ever kill anybody?

KEITETSI: Yes, and right away, because then every child had to be like, I'm the hero. Even they didn't want to kill or torture, you have to do it, because we wanted to impress our leaders. And many of the children wanted to make kind of a competition who is the best, who is not fear (ph), because if you are a coward, then the other children would laugh at you.

So we have to do our best not to be a coward, even though inside we were dying, so outside we have to be like -- you know, they told us that the guns were our mother and our friends. And to lose that gun, you'd rather lose yourself. That's how...

ZAHN: At what -- I understand you were trying to escape from a horrible home situation. At what point did you realize that you were trapped and you needed to get out?

KEITETSI: When they gave me the name, China, it's not the given name from my family. It was given to me by the army. And so many other children had like ramble (ph), and others also had names like suicide, like (UNINTELLIGIBLE) naming butt head, you know, and all those names. And people had to live (ph) on those kinds of names, and it showed your personality. That's when I realized, because many of the children began dying, because they thought they couldn't die of a bullet. And they called us commandos, some of the -- who had no guns, who were told we were commandos and a commando does (ph) die.

ZAHN: Kati, her story is a little bit unusual, because China was not abducted. She was not kidnapped. She was not sold as a sex slave.

(CROSSTALK)

MARTON: No, but children shouldn't be allowed to...

ZAHN: Well absolutely.

MARTON: ... become soldiers.

ZAHN: Oh, I agree.

MARTON: And they are turned into killers. I mean, what was done to China is the worst form of child abuse. And really, this issue goes way beyond the 300,000 child soldiers who are now fighting in almost every war that's going on at the moment. It really says something about who we are. I mean, how much lower can humanity sink, than to use little children to fight its wars?

And we now have a body of international law, including a treaty that makes it illegal to recruit children under 18, which I hope the United States will ratify soon. It's called the Optional Protocol. And the international criminal court, which comes into force in July, which makes it a war crime to use children like China. So we don't need any more laws. We need the will of the international community to say, this is unacceptable.

You know, for four millennia, we didn't use children, not little children in wars, and this is a relatively new phenomenon. And it's not only a terrible form of child abuse, but it also keeps entire regions insecure, because wars that should end, that have no support, keep going, because they can always throw more kids at them, because they can mobilize by recruiting with force, abducting more and more children, and just throwing them -- they are deemed expendable. They are used as cannon fodder, and therefore, entire regions are unsettled.

And by the way, the first American military to die in Afghanistan was at the hands of a 14-year-old soldier. So the American military now has to face the fact that wherever it goes, it will face little children across the enemy line. So it has actually created havoc in the way we fight wars. And there used to be rules governing the way we fight wars. No longer.

And I think it's time -- I hope this week we grab the attention of the world, and that's why we brought China and some other children over for this U.N. conference, because it's really a blot, Paula, on all our faces that we wreck these lives. And China suffers from severe post-traumatic shock syndrome, as do all of them. These are children who will never get their childhoods back. I mean, you see a deceptively whole person here.

ZAHN: Sure.

MARTON: But she will tell you that she will never be the same. Once you rob a child of its childhood and its humanity...

ZAHN: You never get it back.

MARTON: Yes. And it's -- we have got to stop the practice altogether.

ZAHN: Well, thank you both for helping us better understand what a huge problem this is. And I'm glad you are safe, and I'm glad you are trying to have some impact to save kids from the same fate that you suffered -- good luck to you.

KEITETSI: Thank you.

MARTON: Thanks, Paula.

ZAHN: Thank you, Kati and China.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.