In the early hours of the morning not long ago, a brutal massacre took place in Burkina Faso, Africa. Raging fires flattened villages, looted gold, and killed 200 people. Unexpectedly, in this cruel case, many of the people who pulled the trigger were 12-year-olds.
In fact, in Africa, the "Boy Scouts" have committed a bad case, which is not the first. But why aren't the killers adults, and shouldn't these children study at school or play games at home and watch cartoons?
In fact, there are many adults in these criminal gangs, and those children who commit crimes with guns are also victims.
Speaking of Africa, we have to think of one word, poor. Our impression there is also barbaric and backward. However, in such a place, there are still many parents who are willing to have more children.
According to statistics, the country with the highest fertility rate in the world is Nepal, and the data is as high as 6.8. The top ten countries are all in Africa, mainly concentrated in Central and West Africa. Even if you look at the top 30 fertility rates, Africa still accounts for the majority.
Due to the economic and cultural backwardness, most people there live a very primitive life, and there are "illiterates" everywhere. There is not enough to eat, let alone contraception. Coupled with the low level of medical care, poor sanitary conditions, famine, chronic diseases, wars, etc., many children live in a harsh environment after birth.
There are actually very few children who can really grow up healthy and healthy. So some parents think of ordering more children as "spare tires", giving birth to a few more, and there will always be one or two survivors, right?
Moreover, according to the medical conditions and ideological concepts in Africa, even if they do not want to have children, few people will choose abortion. In addition, some governments do not restrict births, and even strongly support them to replenish the country's manpower. As a result, in many parts of Africa, there is a phenomenon of children running all over the ground, which seems to be "happy and harmonious".
In addition, Africa is not poor. In 2014, Africa's diamond reserves reached 60% of the world's reserves, South Africa's gold reserves ranked first in the world, platinum and palladium reserves accounted for 89% of the world's reserves, and oil reserves accounted for 12% of the world's reserves.
These resources have become the "treasures" coveted by various countries, tribes, and extremists, and they can "fight" for this at every turn, so that the African region is not peaceful until now.
In such a war-torn place, people are often shot and killed, and those children who do not know anything have become "fragrant food" in the eyes of criminals.
They are easier to manipulate than adults. As a result, many criminal gangs or armies prefer to capture some children.
They would take the boys back for intense training, teach them to shoot, force them to kill, and constantly brainwash them. Let these children let go of their hatred for criminal gangs and the idea of avenging their parents, and slowly turn into a cold killing machine.
The most famous Scout leader in African history is Foday Sankoh, a former veteran of Sierra Leone. In 1991, Foday Sankoh launched a civil war against the dictatorship and recruited many child soldiers.
In order to turn these children into cold-blooded "weapons", Foday Sankoh trained them inhumanely. He would force them to "boy scouts" to kill their parents and relatives, so that they would never want to go home because of their guilt.
Subsequently, Foday Sankoh would stuff cocaine into the temples of these children, and if they wanted to survive, they would have to confess to being a thief. According to relevant sources, these "baby soldiers" often use extreme brutality to massacre innocent people, and the civil war in Sierra Leone is also known as the bloodiest civil war.
To this day, there are still many African children who experience inhuman treatment, they eat and live with terrorist organizations, but because of frequent abuse, poor influence, coupled with accidental injuries and deaths in the melee, there are few children who can really survive.
The girls' experience is even more terrible, most of them will be arranged behind the scenes to do logistics, and most of them will be sexually assaulted, or sacrificed to the gang leader as a wife.
According to media reports, a Nigerian girl named Kadi was brutalized by a terrorist gang. She used to live in a happy family, and her parents struggled to send her to school, hoping that she would become a doctor in the future.
But at the age of 11, the extremist group Boko Haram attacked her hometown, killing her parents and kidnapping her sister. At the age of 15, Cady chose to get married and gave birth to twins. But fate still did not bypass her, and soon after, her husband was killed, her children were captured, she was also beaten and forced to marry a strange man.
According to some data, 30%-40% of Boy Scouts are girls, but less than 15% are eventually rescued. Because they are more traumatized, many are reluctant to open their hearts and dare not call for help from the outside world. Even if they are rescued by the relevant organizations, it is difficult for them to summon up the courage to return to normal life.
It is difficult for children who are persecuted, and it is even harder to rescue them.
Due to the complexity of armed groups, UNICEF's rescue mission is also out of reach. Coupled with the fact that africa has multiple religious and extremist organizations, most armed conflicts are cross-border, and many children are involved in unrest.
In addition, even if some children are successfully rescued, it is difficult for them to return to their hometowns. In the eyes of the locals, as long as they join armed groups, they are no longer children, and with the crimes they have committed, few communities and schools are willing to accept them.
It is worth noting that after the outbreak of covid-19 in recent years, the problem of children in Africa has become more serious. More and more children are in hunger and disease, and in order to survive, some people begin to volunteer to join the "Boy Scouts", because there are people who will give them some food and will not go hungry.
UNICEF's relief of Boy Scouts has also become more difficult, with some 57 million children in West and Central African countries currently in need of humanitarian assistance.
However, in Africa today, the phenomenon of having three children and four children or more children is still not uncommon, and "having more children has hope for the future" is also a deep-rooted consensus in local society. But it seems that it is more important to calm the war, let the children learn happily, and play with the mud.