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Former child soldier forced to kill best friend By Dominik Kurek OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF A former child soldier who lived through the horrors of the Great War of Africa wants people to know the last lesson he received from his father -- that greatness is measured by a person's heart. Michel Chikwanine was the keynote speaker at the YMCA of Oakville's Community Breakfast for Peace last Friday. He talked about the horrors he lived through growing up in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He said it's not easy to tell people about the hardest parts of his life, but in February 2001, when he returned from a UN school to his home in a refugee camp in Uganda he found his mother and father crying. "My father was 7-foot, 250-pounds. I always thought of him like Superman, that nobody could hurt him. But he was sitting on the bed and he was crying," he said. "He grabbed both of my hands and put them in his one giant hand and looked at me and said, `Michel, don't ever forget the stories I told you when you were a kid. Always remember that great men and great women are not defined by their money, but rather by their heart and what they do for other people.' Right after that my father collapsed on the bed. My father died." It was later learned that his father was poisoned by y the same Congolese g rebels that had Chikwanine grew up in the village of Beni, in the African country, which is close to the border of Uganda. His father was a politician and a human rights activist who always told his son, "If you help your community, the community will help you back." When he was five-years-old, rather than return home from school one day, before 6 p.m. as was his father's rule, he remained behind to play soccer with his best friend, Kevin, who was about twice his age and his protector. Then, military vehicles arrived and he heard gunshots. It was a rule that if you heard gunshots, you dropped to the ground. He saw one of his friends fall on the field and later he learned, the boy didn't drop to protect himself, but was killed. The children were rounded up and forced into trucks. Kevin was placed in a different truck. When they arrived at their destinations, he heard the crunching of bones underneath the convoy and saw the skeletons that were being crushed. He screamed at his captors to release him, to allow him to return home. Instead, he was laughed at, slapped and had his wrists slashed. He was blindfolded and told to put his arms out. He was handed an AK-47 rifle and his finger placed into the trigger. He was yelled at: "Shoot!" "I remember my hand shaking and I dropped the gun to the ground. The same rebel soldier took off my y blindfold, , and as I looked at my y right g hand it was still shaking and was blood coming from it," he said. "I looked in front of me and I saw my best friend Kevin lying there in a pool of his own blood. At five years old, I was forced to kill my best friend." He begged the soldiers to wake his friend up, but the soldiers just laughed. His next two weeks as a child soldier he witnessed atrocities he would not tell the audience. At the end of the two weeks, he and other children were told to raid a nearby village. When the attack was made, when he saw he wasn't watched, he turned and ran into the jungle. He ran through the vegetation, hiding whenever he heard vehicles. After three long days and nights, he found his way home and was taken in by his family. When the Great War of Africa started in 1998, rebel soldiers came through towns and killed teachers, doctors and politicians. His father stood up against these people and was abducted. Chikwanine was just 10-years-old at the time. One day, military vehicles arrived at his home. Having made a promise to his father he would be the man of the house, he went to be with his mother and sisters, hoping to help them. Instead, he was grabbed and told if he closed his eyes he would be shot. The rebels raped his mother and three sisters and forced him to watch. The soldiers slashed his cheek and said the scar was given to him so he See No page 16 15 · Wednesday, November 30, 2011 OAKVILLE BEAVER · www.insideHALTON.com Michel Chikwanine tortured him previously. "The reason why I stand up in front of you today is not because I'm an expert in any of the things I talked about. The reason why I tell my stories is because one of the last promises I made to my father before he died (was) that I will be an activist just as he was." The UN handed Chikwanine, his mother and sister one-way tickets to Canada that same year. He's now a motivational speaker with Free the Children and Me to We. 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