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Child soldier on trial
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE is compelled by the moral complexity of the ICC case against a Ugandan child press-ganged by Joseph Kony
NATURE OR NURTURE?: Dominic Ongwen on trial in The Hague for crimes committed in Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army

Theatre of Violence (15)
Directed by Lukasz Konopa and Emil Langballe  

CAN someone be a victim and a perpetrator? That was at the heart of Dominic Ongwen’s defence case when he faced trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.  

Ongwen was just nine years old when he was abducted on his way to school in Uganda by rebel leader Joseph Kony’s The Lord’s Resistance Army, who had killed his parents. He was heavily indoctrinated by Kony, tortured and turned into a child soldier and killing machine who quickly climbed up the ranks to high commander in the LRA. Yet he is the only person to have been prosecuted for war crimes.  

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