Soldiers’ slave now Child Rights Ambassador
A year ago, Mireille was kidnapped by an armed group in DR Congo and exploited as a sex slave. Today, she’s a World’s Children’s Prize Child Rights Ambassador who fights for girls’ rights. “No girl should have to experience what I went through. I will fight for that until I die!” says Mireille, 16.
TEXT: ANDREAS LÖNN PHOTOS: JOHAN BJERKE
T
he horror began on the evening of market day. As usual, we were sit ting outside our house eating dinner, chatting and laugh ing. It was the same all over the village. People were eat ing and children were laugh ing and playing. It was a love ly evening. But suddenly everything stopped. From the edge of the forest, by the village cassava fields, we heard machine gun fire. At first it was distant, then it got louder. I knew there was a war going on in Congo. I knew that soldiers attacked villages and kid napped and killed people. But 94
I always thought that those sorts of things happened to other people – not to me. In far away places, and not in my village. I had never really been afraid of the war. Like slaves In panic, people tried to gath er up their children and their pots and plates. We put out our fires and lanterns, and we all rushed into our houses to hide. We thought that if only we could stay quiet and pre tend to sleep, maybe they would leave us in peace. We crept under the covers, but my younger siblings couldn’t stop crying. We tried to calm
them down. I cuddled, patted and comforted them and eventually it worked. We could hear people moving between the houses. I was ter rified, but I tried not to show it so that the little ones wouldn’t worry. Suddenly someone kicked our door down. Two soldiers with machine guns and big machete knives rushed into the bedroom. They shined their torches right in our faces. When the soldiers saw me
"We sat as usual outside our house eating dinner, chatting and laughing. But suddenly we heard machine gun fire."
they told me to get up. But I was so afraid, I couldn’t move. Then they pulled me away from my mother roughly, saying: ‘If you cry or shout, we’ll kill you!’ Then they took my two sis ters, who were eleven and sev en. The soldiers bound our hands behind our backs and tied us together in a line with a rope. Like people used to do to slaves a long time ago. Kidnapped Our mother cried and begged the soldiers to let us go. They said that if she paid them they would untie the rope and set us free. But our mother explained that we were poor and didn’t have any money. So the soldiers shoved us out the door. We fell over straight away because we were tied up. When we got out the door we saw lots of girls who were tied up in the same way. There were sixteen of us, and many of the