Freetown | Tuesday
INTERNATIONAL plastic surgeons will from next month start operating on 130 former child combatants who were branded by Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel group, an NGO said on Tuesday.
Rabih Torbay, director of the US-based International Medical Corps (IMC), said the initiative was aimed at helping the former child fighters lead a normal life.
Torbay said in a statement that RUF rebels, who have been waging a 10-year war against successive governments in Freetown, had maimed the children to prevent them from escaping.
He said they “carved the letters RUF on their chests and other parts of their bodies … with razors or broken bottles.”
Rabih said: “there is a list of 130 children who are waiting for the operations but as soon as we start advertising on radio and TV, we expect the number to rise.
“So we are preparing for something up to 600,” he said, adding: “We have already an Italian surgeon here but we are waiting for another surgeon to come who is skilled in skin grafts and reconstructive surgery.
“Our intention is for a specialist to come for one week a month for a number of months beginning the first fortnight of July.”
The programme is being funded by the IMC, Unicef and the US government.
Child protection agencies say up to 10,000 children are estimated to have been drawn into frontline conflict since the start of the civil war in 1991. The RUF uses the boys as porters and fighters and the girls as sex slaves.
Many children have managed to escape from the RUF. Others have been released by the group following negotiations aimed at ending the war.
The RUF campaign has seen tens of thousands of civilians savagely mutilated, raped or displaced. The group is infamous for chopping off the limbs of civilians. – AFP
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