Child Guerillas?!
by Tarık Günersel / June 6, 2014 / No comments
Two poems for child soldiers.
Visual Poem by Tarik Günersel.
Should an organization that uses violence recruit and employ children in combat?
- Life is words in action, literature is action in words.
- Humans are about to destroy their spaceship Earth. Some of them are aware of this and they try to change the course of events. Will they succeed? Will more humans be alarmed and do something?
- Literature is vital and translators are messengers of world peace.
- Though I shall focus on the literary scene in Turkey and its problems regarding freedom of expression, I shall not omit the other parts of our planet. Today local is global and vice versa.
- Tarık Günersel is a poet, playwright, aphorist, librettist and short story writer. He is the president of PEN Turkey and an ex-member of the PEN International Board. He studied English Literature at Istanbul University. A self-exile after the military coup in 1980, he spent four years in Saudi Arabia with his wife Füsun and their daughter Barış, teaching English. A dramaturg at Istanbul City Theater since 1991, he has acted on stage and screen and directed some of his plays. He proposed World Poetry Day in 1997 which was accepted by PEN International and declared by UNESCO as the 21st of March. His translations into Turkish include works by Samuel Beckett, Vaclav Havel and Arthur Miller. His works include The Nightmare of a Labyrinth (mosaic of poems and stories), and How’s your slavery goin’? His Oluşmak (To Become), a “life guide for myself,” includes ideas from world wisdom of the past four millennia. He has recently initiated the Earth Civilization Project with the support of several intellectuals from various parts of the planet.
Recently eleven Kurdish youngsters under the age of 18 have left their homes in southeast Turkey to join the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Their families’ reaction to this has been to demand that PKK send the children back home.
In the past thirty years some kids have been 15, 14, and even 12 years old when they lost their lives with rifles in their hands.
In 2012 the PKK said that youngsters under 18 were not (or no longer) included in armed struggle, adding that children were functioning in other areas instead.
Democratization and nonviolence should go hand-in-hand. Terror should not be used by any individual, group, organization, government, army, or state.
Below are two poems related to similar situations in world history:
Little Guerillas
Girl
Code name: Flower
Recruited at the age of 14
She was killed at 15
Boy
Code name: Hope
Joined at 12
Killed at 13
Girl
Sunrise
11
12
Boy
Victory
12
14
Girl
Unidentified
Possibly 13
Boy
Unidentifiable
Possibly 14
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www.
profits.com
weapons.com
gods.org
deaths.com
