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Children Associated With Armed Forces and Armed Groups
Children Associated With Armed Forces and Armed Groups - Ibrahim.jpg
I am 17. I was born in Maiduguri. My mom died when I was 5 years old, from high blood pressure. My older brother and I went to Bopo to stay with my aunt. I spent 7 years there. I went to Islamic School. It was a good education. I helped in the farm, helped growing groundnut, beans and sorghum. Before I was taken, it was fine. We played with my friends. When Boko Haram came we were in school. They came into the school, picked us up and covered our faces with masks so we wouldn’t see the road they were taking us on. They took us to the bush and they dropped us there. There were so many of them and so many of us I couldn’t count. Boko Haram asked me to carry a gun to become a shooter [sic]. I said I am not going to do it. They said if I wasn’t going to do it, they would give me another duty; I had to start learning the Koran. There is a certain target; if you reach 40, you would no longer go out. What happens here isn’t entirely clear, but it seems Sa’idu would deliberately miss these targets. Upon seeing that there “5 remaining” he grabbed his younger sister to try and make an escape: but Boko Haram caught the two of them. They took me to the bush and beat the hell out of me with a thick engine belt. At this point Sai’du removes his shirt to reveal horrific scars, wounds that have clearly removed layers of skin from the middle of his back. “Where are you going to?!” they asked me. I said I wanted to go with my sister. They told me to return to the camp. From this point Sai’du was kept in a camp in the village of Duke, with a 2.5m high wall made of blocks. I was with them for four years. They are wicked. I hated going to their place. They don’t do anything good. At times they beat us again if they were angry about something. There was no explanation for what they did or why. They fed us sorghum meals, but only twice a week. We were kept in a room about 5m x 3m large. Where we peed and that is where we poo, and that is the
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- Chris Parkes
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- https://chrisparkes.photoshelter.com/contact