Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mr. Bigelow
English 10
10 December 2015
Good morning your honor and judges. Once more, my name is Yvette, these are my
colleagues; Nicole, Frank, and Cole, and we are the prosecutors of this case. In our opening
statement, we had mentioned that we would call two witnesses to the stand to testify as the
defendants guilt. Each witness has testified how we explained and we have established that the
following are facts that are beyond reasonable doubt; 1) Miss Kabolo was 10 years of age when
she was taken from her school during a PFLS attack, 2) She identifies as a Kani, 3) She had seen
firsthand other children beaten or killed for trying to escape, At the camp, where she had become
a slave, she had learned that misbehaving or running would bring a beating or get her killed,
which is compulsory labor, 4) Since her arrival she had learned to operate an AK-47 and tactics
of war, whilst being a slave, as she was too young to go into combat, 5) Kabolo has met the
defendant at least twice and the first time he had pointed a gun at her for dropping his drink, 6)
At the age of 11 she was sent into combat, 7) she was usually sent with the younger children to
attack from the bushes nearest to the village, 8) She had been given amphetamine to dull her
senses during vicious attacks on villagers, 9) she was 12 when the UN soldier, Patrick Bateman,
had rescued her during a raid and transferred to a rehabilitation centre, which was for former
child soldiers, 10) Mr. Bateman was trained to deal with the threat that child soldiers pose to the
safety of the UN peacekeeping troops and the residents of Shansau. 11) He had witnessed several
armed children acting as soldiers in the camps and between 40 to 50 children fighting with
automatic weapons and machetes, 12) he is traumatized about having to fight against children
We would ask you to reject the defense theories of the case. First) The defense will
attempt to get you to think that the rebels were taking the children to the camps for their safety; a
little force is necessary if its for protection right? Wrong, the defendant had raised a gun
towards a 10 year old girl purely because she dropped his drink in front of him. Usually pointing
a gun at someone is an act of violence, not protection, regardless if there was intent behind it or
not. The defenses witness, Thomas Gaba, even stated that when he was taken to the rebel camp
that Mr. Mabo had told him, and the other children, that if they obeyed, they would be protected.
Theyre children, and children naturally dont follow rules. Yes, rules are there for children to
learn about how to act in different situations, but we as people learn from our mistakes, so the
idea implies that if they stepped out of line, or disobeyed, they would not get the protection that
they were in need of. The fact that both Miss Kabolo and Mr. Gaba both had seen firsthand that
children that didnt do what they were told were beaten or killed shows that it wasnt just about
not getting protection, not just reprimanding them, but these punishments were severe and lethal.
Mr. Gaba even gave out these types of punishments to children, as it was his duty to do so. The
defense might say that he lied about his age to be able to work, yet that raises another idea where
it was the adults that were doing this to these children. The people that they were told would
protect them. Second) They will try to have you consider the possibility that the defendant did
not know that the children in the camp were being trained as soldiers. That doesnt make sense as
the defendant was the commander-in-chief of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Shansau,
or PFLS, which is the military wing of the Union of the Shansau Patriots, where the defendant
was one of the founders as well as the president. The defense may even say that the children,
even the Kani children, were there for protection, and basic necessities, yet, the camps were
teeming with armed children and were acting as soldiers or compound guards. Therefore the
argument that they were there for protection is just another excuse that the defendant had used
because he did not want to be held accountable for his actions. Once again, the defendant is the
president of the Union of the Shansau Patriots so why would they keep the children at a military
training camp for protection rather than the normal camps? A more accurate statement would be
that they were there for the rebels protection and to suit their needs. Third) The defense could
argue that this would only be relevant for the enlistment of children and say that they were only
in the camps not in actual combat. The PFLS main goal was to establish dominance through
violence against non-Lago people, especially against the Kani, and to Rid their land of the
Kani people. The defendant had also vowed not to stop the offensive at any cost until the PFLS
toppled the Troua government, this is where they had resorted to using children as there was no
longer a steady supply of adults that would fight for their cause. The defendant should have
realized and known about this when the PFLS was formed. They were fighting a war werent
they? Defense will try to bring up the defendants sad past and say that the war only started
because the Troua government, the Kanis, had kicked the Lagos out of Shansau and they had
killed his father with the sole reason being that he was a Lago, making this an ethnic hatred
issue. There are many times where it states that the people had identified as one or the other. This
shows that they would have had to ask everyone what they identified as when they were running
all the Lagos out of Shansau. Many people lie for their own benefit, even Thomas Gaba even lied
about his age and since he knew that the PFLS was a group of rebel Lagos, its highly likely that
he lied about about his ethnicity. His father was a Lago yes, but his mother was a Kani, so how
did he make that decision? It was also stated that the PFLS was killing all the Kani in sight;
would that include his mother? There are many discrepancies in Mr. Gabas testimony, answers
that only raise more questions, making him an unreliable witness along with the fact that he has a
major bias towards the defendant as they were fighting on the same side. Therefore the defendant
saying that the Kani officer had killed his father on the basis of he looked like a Lago is yet
another excuse that the defendant is using to distract you from the fact that the PFLS was
promoting ethnic hatred against the Kanis to further their cause. Its all just another sob story to
cloud your mind and put your focus on irrelevant things so you wont notice that they were using
the exact same method that the Kanis used when they were supposedly kicked out. Violence and
ethnic hatred, attacks on unsuspecting villagers does not sound very good for their cause. If
they were fighting against the people that kicked them out wouldnt they have just went after the
government, not innocent bystanders? Easily impressionable, intimidated, and scared young
children that dont understand what was going on, that had lost their families, were trained to
fight against innocent people. Miss Kabolo was only 11 when she had joined the raids on
villages. Fourth) the defense will attempt to push the blame on the Troua government, because
they were the ones that started the war. Doesnt that sound familiar? They started it sounds a lot
like a child that is trying to get out of trouble, to distract from the fact that they had reacted badly
to the situation. As civilized people we have learned that that is not an excuse for doing
something wrong. We are taught that arguments need evidence and clear reasons to back up our
cause. The defense might put Charles Yitu into your crosshairs by saying that he was the one in
charge of the camps when the defendant was away, which he was very frequently. That he is the
one responsible for the use of children, but he is only the second in command. The defendant
should have been keeping up with the happenings of his camp regardless of is attendance. Or
does the defendant just have terrible control over his subordinates that he just didnt know? This
type of immature behavior doesnt pardon any of the atrocities that he and his group had
committed, it just furthers our understanding of how out of control the entire rebel group is. The
group did have this man as their leader, and if he is this out of control then what does that say
about the rest of this revenge bound group? The defenses witnesses have plenty of reasons to lie
about the situation. Mr. Mabo, if proven innocent, will get off the hook for the atrocities that he
had committed and will be able to live guilt free knowing that you, as the judges for this case,
agree that what he has done to these innocent lives was reasonable. They are not credible
sources, there is plenty of bias and many issues about their testimonies that just raise more
Our witnesses however are credible, they will gain nothing from lying, they are just here
to give justice for all the bystanders that got caught in this petty argument between the two
peoples. Even though the defense might say that Miss Kabolo is just a young child or that Mr.
Bateman has psychological trauma, PTSD, if you will, they have absolutely nothing to earn from
lying. Kabolo had lost her parents, even if they arent dead it would be difficult to find them and
she has already come to terms with the idea that they wouldnt be proud of the things she has
done. She was taken during school, some, if not all of her friends were either killed or captured.
She has been robbed of the innocence that we would call a childhood, because she was forced to
fight a war that wasnt hers to fight in the first place. We know that Kabolo, along with other
children, that were taken to a rehabilitation centre for child soldiers where they had shown clear
signs of width drawl symptoms from the drug that they were given and that they had known as
Bubbles or its more commonly known as amphetamine. Let me give you a quick rundown of
the effects of amphetamine, it increases heart rate and blood pressure and decreases appetite. It
also can cause hallucinations and confusion, which the defense will try to use as a way to
discredit Miss Kabolo, but for them to use this fact as a countermeasure then they would have to
admit that she had been given this drug and was using it continuously. What type of person
would say that its okay for anyone to give children drugs that have these harsh side effects. If
Kabolo had these symptoms then it would mean that she needed emergency medical attention,
and clearly hasnt gotten any. For these children to have such clear signs of withdrawal they
must have taken it for several weeks continuously before they were rescued. Mr. Bateman has
already fought for 22 years for the Canadian Armed Forces yet he now needs psychological help
because he had to fight against children, knowing that he had two of his own at home in Canada.
The defense will try to say that he is unreliable because he now may have PTSD, yet if that is
true then Mr. Bateman would have clear, vivid, recollection of the events that had caused this
stress. It also would take a lot of trauma to make this man that has been doing this for over 20