The Standard

Issue date: 1/26/10 Section: Features

Media Credit: Ashton Shewmaker

A mix of laughter and solemn silence filled Carrington Hall's auditorium Thursday evening. Every seat was taken by students, faculty, staff and visitors to hear the story of Michel Chikwanine, now 22, who at five years old was forced to be a child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.

Chikwanine's hardships started one night when he was staying out after 6 p.m., the time his parents expected him home. He wanted to stay out a little later to play soccer with some friends.

"I remember I was screaming 'goal' when out of no where we heard a gunshot," he said. "Then one of my friends dropped to the ground."

Soldiers in trucks abducted Chikwanine and other children, including his best friend Kevin, and when they reached their destination, Chikwanine was forced to follow the rebel soldiers.

"(The soldiers said) we are going to initiate you into the army," he said. "They slit my wrists and rubbed cocaine and gun powder into the wound so I would go crazy."

The rebel soldiers made Chikwanine put his finger on the trigger of an AK-47 and they told him to shoot. When they took off his blindfold, his friend Kevin was on the ground.

"At five years old, I was forced to kill my best friend," he said.

Two weeks later, Chikwanine ran and escaped from the rebel soldiers.

"I had this idea that I have to leave or else my dad is going to punish me," Chikwanine said. "In my head, I (would) rather die in my father's hand than die in the rebel soldier's hand."

Chikwanine's father was a human rights activist and was influential to him.

"My father went up to the soldiers and said, 'You call yourselves liberators?'," he said. "The soldiers hated my father from then on. They kidnapped him and tortured him for seven months."

While Chikwanine's father was gone, soldiers broke into his house, and he had to watch rebel soldiers rape his mother and two oldest sisters.

"I was 10 years old," he said. "I had made a promise to my father to protect my family."

Chikwanine started punching the soldiers, but one of them left a scar from a machete on his left cheek.

His family survived the ordeal and left for a refugee camp in Uganda.

Chikwanine did reunite with his father for a small time in the refugee camp but was not able to be around him long.

Continued...

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