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October 4, 2007

Tonight: Child soldier turned author at RWU

Former child soldier and best-selling author Ishmael Beah is scheduled to discuss his memoir “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier” at Roger Williams University.

Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. In 1992, one year after an attack that eventually turned into a civil war, Beah’s family had been killed and he was alone, surrounded by war. Soon after, he was recruited as a soldier in the government army.

By 2002, when the war ended, as many as 50,000 people had been killed.

UNICEF officials rescued Beah from the front lines when he was 18. He now serves on the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee. The advocacy group estimates as many as 300,000 children currently are serving as soldiers for rebel and government armies.

Beah will talk about his book, which also explores the difficulty of reentry to civilized society, at the Recreation Center gymnasium at Roger Williams University today at 7 p.m. The discussion is free and open to the public.

Come back to projo.com and tomorrow's Journal for a report on his talk.

Video: Beah speaks about his reasons for writing the book in this excerpt:

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 11:11 AM | Permalink

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