Are child soldiers the same as child criminals?

     Go out, shoot, be fed drugs, repeat, be killed in the process or be freed, only to meet the uncomfortable bars of a jail cell. This is the life of most child soldiers. Once finally freed out of this brutal system they are punished for murder and have to spend the beginning of a proper life, locked up. Most child soldiers are forced into fighting and have no control over their actions. However some believe that child soldiers should be punished because if they are not then the number of child soldiers will continue growing. Rehabilitation should be the aim not punishment.

     Almost all the time child soldiers are forced into fighting, by the adult commanders or by themselves. A lot of the time they have no say in becoming a soldier. If a war is going on in the country and soldiers are needed to fight, children are often recruited. Because their brain has not fully developed, they can easily be shaped to think new things. Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier states that a way the commanders ‘brainwash’ you is to “Feed you drugs and then kill people in front of you to desensitize you and then be fed more drugs”. Is forcing them to take drugs and then shooting someone right in front of their eyes really how we want to raise a generation of children? Children often apply to become child soldiers as well. Even though they choose to apply, they are not necessarily ‘forced’ into joining but there can be huge pressure to that it almost feels as though they are being forced to. Because war is almost always in 3rd world countries and countries that have a lot of poverty, children think that going to a military camp will provide food and shelter, something they don’t have. “Children go to military camps because the don’t know what to do with their life anymore”. Most of the child soldiers no longer have families because they were killed and have no idea what to do. Some of these children who have witnessed their families being killed join military camps to get revenge. People think that fighting is a way that people can take their anger out but once out on the field everything changes and ideas of revenge seem to slip away as fear comes flooding in. By the time children realize that it’s not what they want, it’s too late and they’d probably be dead.

     In order to stay alive in the battle field they need to do whatever the adult commanders say, this means that they don’t have much control over their actions. The commanders usually control the children using fear and ‘brainwashing’ them. Fear is easily used to control the child soldiers because most of them have had a very difficult past. “Because you have lost everything that is there to you, this is how you bring children to war, you destroy their towns, their families...”. They haunt the children using their past’s and because they don’t have anything left they listen. “and then you can manipulate them and drug them so they do whatever you want them to do”. It is human nature to attach on to something, a group of people that you can call family. So when children are left without any thing, they look to the group of other child soldiers and commanders. They have no control over who they get to be with and it’s not their fault that they want someone to call family. “[You] Become so removed from exhibiting human emotion so this becomes your life, your reality, the group becomes your family”

     Some people think that child soldiers should be punished as they are dangerous after have being known nothing but killing. Omar Khadr, a former child soldier who was put into jail for killing Army Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer. For most people this seems like a normal war crime or that Omar would be the victim as he was forced to kill. But because “when Khadr was angry at his guards, he would recall how he had killed a U.S. soldier and that would make him happy” it makes you wonder about how dangerous he really is. Because he feels pride in killing Speer it can be scary to let him back out when he thinks it is okay to kill. When child soldiers get to this stage they then start to become child criminals.

Animals Have Feelings As Well

As the truck disappeared into the distance the little calf was never to be seen again. The mother elephant felt nothing. She just stood there watching. This is what people are saying, people say that animals don’t have feelings and cannot cry emotionally, they say they can’t feel sad. Doesn’t sound more natural to say: as the truck disappeared into the distance the little calf was never to be seen again, the mother elephant felt destroyed, she felt as though she could never be happy again, tears of sadness dripped down her face. For she had just lost her baby.

Some scientists state that animals are not bothered by the fact that they are being shoved into cages for shows, forced to perform for circus and more. They are getting tazed, burned, whipped and hit for no good reason but human greed and people still think that they can’t get sad or can’t cry. “We are just like animals, we are animals” A grade 8 student at UWCSEA states. “Most people think we are better than animals but in reality we’re not”

“What you see when you actually get to know wild animals is very different from a casual sighting. If you saw human beings doing nothing but drinking water or running around a field, would you think that is all there is to human beings? If you know the people drinking the water or running around, you have a different experience watching them” Carl Safina, author of ‘Beyond Words’ states. This suggests that there is much more to animals than we see. What could be going on inside these animals minds that we are not seeing? If you saw someone walking down the street you wouldn't assume anything. That person might of been going through a divorce or just found out that he had a long lost brother. Since these are just things we will never know, we might as well consider them.

“Charles Darwin is a bit of an embarrassment for modern psychologists in that he was more willing to ascribe human emotions to animals than scientists tend to be today” Says Dr Thomas Dixon. Millions of animals are dying are year, having their family taken away, being abused and so much more and yet people still believe that animals can’t cry emotionally like us. “They can, I’ve seen it” Says some students in grade 8. Fear, all animals that live like this live in fear. People and animals are the same, except animals can be faster, smarter, hear better, see better but they don’t go around killing humans for fun. So why are we at the top of the food chain? Do we deserve to be?

Why do we make such a big deal over human slavery when we are the ones creating animal slavery, they have to work longer and harder than humans. “Humans have this very sad habit of denying the existence of any emotion or reasoning within other species but why” Because recognizing other animals as similar to us is harder. It is much harder to hurt someone you can relate to, so in order to justify the abuse of other species humans must sustain an image of us and other creatures as more dissimilar than we are. I really don’t think animals like being whipped and forced to act in circuses, I really don’t think animals like being put in a small cage all by themselves and I really don’t think animals liked having their families and friends killed.

‘Just as people began filling in the seats the elephant trainer came to untie the elephants ankle, as the chain dropped to the ground the elephant shook with fear. Forced to stand on a ball for 1 hour and if he fell he would be punished afterwards. A single tear slid down his face as he thought about his family, he was taken away when he was only 4 months old. The trainer grabbed his whip and whipped the elephant hard around the stomach just as a warning. A few years ago this elephant would have of taken this chance to run, to crush the trainer but no. This elephant was so traumatised, so broken that he just stood there, tears continuing to fall. When the elephant first taken to the circus his ankle was tied to a metal pole. He pulled and yanked for hours and hours which lead to months and months. After a year of trying the elephant gave up, believing that he would never be able to get free. As years passed the elephant grew older and stronger the elephant still never bothered to pull or yank. Although the elephant was strong enough to break free and run away, he had already given up and never bothered to try.’

Haze Affects PE Lessons At UWCSEA

As the haze continued to swoop in, the UWCSEA PE department made a plan. They decided to change the PE unit so students got more of an opportunity to learn without haze trouble. All PE units that took place outside were changed to an indoor sport, some being basketball and ping pong. The plan took place on October 28th. The idea behind this is so the students don’t only have a couple on and off days but get a whole extra unit to learn more things. The PE unit that was cancelled and changed was swimming. “It’s so you guys get a stable PE unit and not different topics every lesson” Said Taylor Smith, head of swimming in UWCSEA and PE teacher.

Adding on to that, the haze continued to ruin other sports such as after school rugby, football and more. “We haven’t been able to play properly and our finals in 2 weeks!” One touch rugby player said, wanting to kick the wall in anger. She also added that “I haven’t been able to go outside like go to the park or play games” The students continue to wait, hoping that the haze will vanish. The alternative is to play indoor sports that were meant to be outside such as football, this is proving to be difficult as all sports are forced to moved inside. We all continue to wait for this ghastly haze to pass.