Child Soldiers

While looking at child soldiers for a while in class, I’ve decided that they are definitely victims. I think this because of all the evidence I've seen. For example they are kidnapped, taken from their parents or sold from their parents (because of how poor they are). Then they re drugged into killing in a suicidal war. I think that these children are not perpetrators in this situation. I think that the people who run the organizations and drug them with powerful medications and tell theme to kill, were the enemy in this situation

Th first piece of evidence that supports that they were victims. It happens in one of the worst places today called Myanmar  (Burma) has one of the highest rates of child soldiers recruitment. Thousands of boys, some as young as 10, are purchased, kidnapped, or terrorized into joining the country’s army. This shows that the people who run the army feel like they have the right to take helpless kids and put military grade weapons on them, and send them into a blood bath of combat. 

One other piece of information is that the runners of the army drugged these young boys so much that they couldn’t feel the pain of what they were doing. When the boys were rescued, they come out of the war with a serious drug addiction and sometimes even alcohol. In a short video we watched, a man named Ishmael Beahad been in a situation the same as many of his other fellow army-mates. He had been rescued, and had to go to a rehab center. It took him 8 months to recover and just to be able to sleep soundly without having murderous nightmares about the wars he was in. It took him years to become sober from the drugs he took (brown brown, marijuana, and cocaine). He couldn’t take a shower or see running water because all he saw was blood coming out of the faucet. People had said that they are less of armies than a drugged-out street gang with military grade weapons and 13 year old brides. That’s how bad it really was. 

In conclusion I think thßat child soldiers are victims of this horrible senereo. I think that they should be treated better than what they are being treated like now. They think that it’s “normal” to be killing people, but it’s not. It’s a murderous and heartless thing to be doing. They should not be drugged out and gang like that have weapons full grown adults can barely use. All in all I think that these minors are being treated unfairly as victims and this needs to stop soon.