STOP THE GUN TRADE TERRORISING KIDS' LIVES Oct 10 2003 By Jamie Theakston ONE person is killed every minute by one of 639million small arms flooding the world. To its shame Britain, the globe's second biggest arms exporter, is a leading player in this grim and "dangerously unregulated" trade. Yesterday Amnesty and Oxfam launched a campaign for an international treaty to restrict weapons sales. As they did so, the suffering went on. Here, TV presenter Jamie Theakston reports from Uganda where guns supplied by the West are put into the hands of children kidnapped by rebels who brainwash them into mindless slaughter. This is where it ends - weapons sold by the rich to the Third World poor...and all so that other poor can die. THEY stood clothed in rags in the shade of a tree and sang so sweetly that, even without a translation, it might have been a love song. In a way it was for it recalled for these tragic people the homes and lives they had lost, the humanity so brutally torn from them before they were even old enough to understand the difference between right and wrong. Before me were four women and 53 young men, all with the same haunted faces, singing of the terrors they had endured at the hands of the cult Lord's Resistance Army. The crazed LRA proclaims it wishes to "purify" the Ugandan people who they say have fallen into sin. But their message is bloodshed through the barrels of guns originally sold by the dealers of Europe and America. The chanting singers were among more than 100 children and young adults I met in northern Uganda who had been abducted and turned into soldiers. Some were only 11. They sang of the nightmare of being pulled from their beds by screaming soldiers who torched their homes, slaughtered their parents and then forced them at gunpoint to march up to 40 miles carrying heavy loads. The weak were pitilessly butchered, sometimes by seasoned soldiers but more often by recruits as a gruesome initiation. Stories I heard - and the sights in hospitals of men, women and children shot and beaten - will haunt me for the rest of my life. I heard of children forced to beat their own parents to death, a savage insurance that they would never try to return to their villages. I heard of lips, ears and arms hacked off, of long, slow deaths. I heard of innocence drained from children made to commit atrocities so unspeakable they cannot be mentioned here. Worst of all were the confessions of how they learned to murder with ferocity and impunity. Many told how after their first kill they felt nothing as they slaughtered others. Only now, as their dedicated carers work to bring them back into the community, are they starting to appreciate the wrongs they were made to do. The emptiness in their souls has been replaced by fear, guilt and shame. As we worry about the spiralling gun culture blighting our own country, these people live every day at one end or another of a weapon. They are weapons the West has supplied when we should have been offering a humanitarian alternative. They are also weapons we continue to supply, often unknowingly, as guns filter down from armies to rebels and bandits through the black market. Britain has sold small arms to more than 100 countries since 1995. We are the world's second biggest arms exporter with a trade worth £3billion a year. We sold this market in death. Now we have a responsibility to clean up the mess. This is not a hopeless cause. It would be easy to close our eyes to the continuing waste of life and tell ourselves these are just tribal wars. No, these are children forced to kill other children, growing up knowing only violence, able to hold an entire population at their mercy because they carry the military advantage. Yesterday Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Action Network on Small Arms launched a campaign for a global weapons treaty. I got on board because I truly believe it can make a difference. Instead of a sticking plaster approach, it aims to address the roots of the problem - take the guns away and the people can start to rebuild their lives. With eight million small arms and two bullets for each person on the planet being produced every year, we are storing up tragedy for the world's poorest. We need to start at home by looking at our own arms trade. How can we guarantee that the arms and ammunition we sell will not end up in the hands of a 12-year-old in Uganda or Sudan? Can we not use our considerable influence to pressurise the government of Uganda into protecting these people and negotiating with the rebels? Our government promised to clean up our shadowy arms trade as part of its 1997 election manifesto. Now it is time for it to honour that pledge. The wealthiest nations have cashed in on the trade of death for years. They must work together to repair the damage before it is too late. You can help by writing to your MP, MEP and the Government. Over the next three years the arms campaign organisers hope to collect a million photographs for the world's biggest photo petition. Oxfam director Barbara Stocking said in London yesterday the photos would represent the million people who will die in the time it takes to assemble the unique appeal. She declared: "It's not enough for individual governments to act, the international community must decide not to tolerate this." Go to www.controlarms.org or call 0870 010 8799 or 020 78146200 for details. Deals in death Britain is the world's second biggest arms dealer after the United States, with sales worth more than £3billion. Two bullets are produced every minute for every man, woman and child on the planet. Every minute, someone in the world is killed by conventional weapons. A third of countries spend more on their military than they do on health. The UK, US and France earn more from arms sales to developing nations than they give in aid. There are 639million small arms in the world - one for every 10 people - and eight million more are produced every year. A pistol can be bought for the price of half a pint of lager - £1.50 - in the markets of Uganda. BASIL'S STORY IN the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army I killed people with guns and knives. Maybe 30, maybe more. I was 15 when I first killed. We could burn down a village and kill everyone. I feared my commanders so I wanted to please them. I know now I have done very bad things. Sometimes I feel pains inside, so bad I think it will kill me. I was 10 when the LRA abducted me and my four brothers. Two escaped, one died in training as a rebel. When some boys escaped they were returned and cut into slices from the feet up. We had to watch. BETTY'S STORY I WAS asleep when armed LRA rebels abducted me, my sister and brother. I cried for my mother. They beat me and said they'd kill me. I was 14 and my little sister was nine. As we walked, three boys tried to escape, three girls collapsed. They killed them all. My brother died in a Ugandan People's Defence Army ambush. In Sudan we were taken to LRA leader Joseph Kony for training. We were given 10 strokes and all passed out. I had to be a rebel's wife. He beat me, made me pregnant. I ran away. Now I am terrified they will return and kill me.