The Murderous Innocents 1

I remember the first time I saw the movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’. I was shocked to the marrow and prayed that such genocide would not happen in Nigeria (Though we’ve had similarly close cases already!). Then I saw ‘Sometimes in April’ which was far more horrific than ‘Hotel Rwanda’ and I almost wept as I imagined these terrible things happening to people in Africa.

 

The first ever of such movies I saw was ‘The Rise and Fall of Idi Amin’, a movie so real in its depiction that rumors were rife amongst we ignorant ones that it was real life being documented.
‘Blood Diamond’ exposed the brutal shedding of blood and war by greedy folks all because of diamonds. The ‘Long sleeve or short sleeve’ scene scared my thoughts vividly.

 

‘Lord of War’ showcased how weapons were illegally sold to African Rebels to help them gain ground over the war. I can never forget the credit opening scene which followed the process of a bullet being manufactured up to the point it ends up being fired into the skull of a child.

More movies everyday depicting the horrors of civil wars and genocides in Africa have been made but I came across a movie with a shocking and very different perspective recently that made me go looking for facts.

I’m talking of Jean-Stephane Sauvaire’s 2008 movie, ‘Johnny Mad Dog’

The movie was extracted from a book by the same tile, written by Emmanuel Dongala, a Congo citizen who fled the country in 1997 during its civil war and now lives in western Massachusetts.
The film focuses on a group of child soldier commandos, led by 15 year old Johnny, who are part of a Rebel faction bent on seizing control of war-torn Congo. They rob, pillage and slay everything in their path and bear names like No Good Advice, Small Devil, Jungle Rocket, and Young Major.



At the same time we also follow the story of Laokolé, also the same age, who simply wants to finish high school and become an engineer. She tries to escape her war torn country with her little brother Fofo, 8 and in the process crosses paths with Johnny as the story progresses.

The acting of the children in this movie was so realistic that I went online on a fact finding mission as to how Jean-Stephane Sauvaire achieved this. I discovered that the kids were actually former child soldiers from the Liberian civil war. They didn’t need to be actors; all they had to do was act what they did during the war. The location shoot was actually in Liberia which had a lot of war torn areas that were apt for the scenes.



To imagine kids like this fighting in the war terrified me; they were younger, had more energy than adults, that apart from being introduced to all manner of drugs and ‘jazz’ to enhance their performance, and they were very deadly as shown by the bloodthirsty No good advice, Johnny’s second in command.

My mind wandered further. How on earth did child soldiers come into existence? Almost, if not every war in Africa has had the factor of kid soldiers being recruited to fight in the war. Is it the poverty level or some other third world factor that makes this happen? I went a-searching and I found shocking results…

To be continued...