forgotten
Some 27,000 Sierra Leoneans are estimated to have been disabled or had one or more limbs amputated during the 1991-2002 civil war.* Many of them children. incapable of helping themselves. They were butchered with machetes, specifically their limbs, hands and feet, cut off. This is the story of a particular group of them that remarkably and against all odds became professional footballers…
the amputee football club
Cutting off peoples’ limbs - in most cases their hands - was one of the brutal strategies used by members of the Revolutionary United Front to terrify people to support them.
Cutting off peoples’ limbs - in most cases their hands - was one of the brutal strategies used by members of the Revolutionary United Front to terrify people to support them. Some 27,000 Sierra Leoneans are estimated to have been disabled or have had one or more of their limbs amputated during the 1991-2002 civil war.*
gratitude
I have trouble looking at the world around me. The socio-economic situation is seriously unjust. There are people who we should be grateful to and express gratitude for enduring the worst atrocities human beings have to offer. As if this wasn’t bad enough most of them were children at the time, incapable of helping themselves. They were butchered with machetes, specifically their limbs, hands and feet, cut off.
why?
The reasons given for this barbarism were to prevent them from having a future and further they were blamed for voting for the candidate who would become the President they were now fighting. Essentially, by casting their vote for this man they were responsible for the present state of affairs.
no hands, no vote
In Sierra Leone, you cast your vote by placing your fingerprint on the ballot. Much in the same way we police booking people into jail, in movies. Therefore if they had no hands, they had no thumbs or fingers. No thumbs or fingers meant no fingerprints which meant no vote!
“No thumbs or fingers meant no fingerprints which meant no vote....”
