Child soldiers turn to crime
14/09/2004 20:30  - (SA)  

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Kinshasa - About 130 former child soldiers who have been demobilised and live in a camp in the northwest Democratic Republic of Congo city of Gbadolite have turned to crime and are wreaking terror on the city, a rights group said on Tuesday.

"They are committing more and more acts of aggression and threatening the security of the people of Gbadolite," Voice of the Voiceless (VSV) said in a statement received by AFP.

"Every evening, they attack passers-by" near the camp where they are housed, the rights group said.

Last week, the former child soldiers, who fought in the ranks of the rebel Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) in DRC's five-year war, which beat up a journalist from Radio Liberte and stabbed two schoolchildren near their cantonment site, VSV said.

The rights group asked the transition government, set up under a peace pact that ended the war, to "scrupulously oversee demobilisation operations by placing these children in the charge of experienced technical structures".

It also urged the government to provide financially for the ex-child soldiers in exchange "for agreeing to leave the army".

A programme launched by the interim government in August to disarm former fighters in DRC's complicated war and help them return to civilian life is funded by, among others, the UN.

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