RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Tamil Tigers Bait Children, Parents

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jul 19 2000 (IPS) - Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger insurgents are drawing children into their ranks with false promises of restoring them to their families or sending them abroad after some time, say aid workers.

Even as the international community accused the armed ethnic rebels of breaking a promise to keep children out of their cadres, there was fresh evidence of more child recruitment by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

Soon after capturing the strategic Elephant Pass linking the Jaffna peninsula to the Indian Ocean island nation’s mainland in late April, the Tigers began a new recruitment drive, targeting children in the north and the east, aid workers said.

“In the eastern Batticaloa region, the rebels showed films of their battlefield successes and urged youngsters to join the war effort against what they labelled as ‘foreign invaders’ (the Sri Lankan army). Within days, 14 youngsters had joined the rebels,” said an aid worker from the region.

In mid-July, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) accused the LTTE of not keeping its word to a special U.N. envoy that the Tigers would not use under 18-year-olds to battle Sri Lankan troops while children below 17 years of age would not be used for non-combat duties.

“We have had very limited success with the rebels in our campaign against child soldiers,” UNICEF Representative in Colombo, Colin Glennie told IPS.

The LTTE had given the assurance when Olara Ottunu, Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict met Tiger leaders in Sri Lanka two years ago.

“There has been little progress since those assurances. We know the rebels recruit children and despite their repeated denials, we have told them that we are not satisfied until they have put these assurances into practice,” Glennie noted.

Dozens of school-going children, some just 10 years old, have been recruited by the LTTE in the past several years in their battle against government troops in the northern and the eastern regions where the Tigers are demanding a separate home for Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil community.

There were many children among the over 60,000 people killed in the 17-year-old conflict. According to a leading human rights group, many of the young rebels killed in recent fighting in the north “were brought home in sealed coffins as they had been mangled by shelling.”

However, aid workers say that parents and even youngsters find the bait offered by the LTTE hard to resist.

“The rebels offer new recruits a chance of going abroad after three years of voluntary service or promise to return the children after they have served five years,” an international aid worker told IPS.

The child soldiers are paid a monthly wage of about 3,000 rupees (40 U.S. dollars) for frontline battle duties while their parents are supplied regular food rations. The child recruit’s family also gets farm land and parents are helped to get daughters married without paying dowry.

“The rebels look after the families of their cadres. They have a good support system going,” the aid worker said.

While poor parents find the offer tempting, the young boys and girls are drawn by the chance of going abroad. “Who would resist the temptation to be sent abroad by the rebel group to various countries as political refugees?” he noted.

“I know one Tamil youngster who was helped by the rebels to reach Ireland after an arduous journey which took him through Greenland,” the worker said.

The Tigers mainly target schools for recruitment. “They go into schools, give lectures and video presentations on the war,” another aid worker said.

Aid workers say that the Tigers are not observing their promise to UNICEF to put up banners at recruitment camps declaring no one below 18 years would be hired.

The rebels are careful to keep the children out of sight of international aid workers. “You would rarely see them around or at checkpoints. Occasionally when a rebel vehicle whizzes past, there would be some young recruits inside,” he added.

Meanwhile, rights groups have criticised the Sri Lankan government for trying to lower the age of entry into the army. According to UNICEF officials, there was an attempt some years ago to bring this down from 18 to 17 years because few young men were joining the army.

“Thankfully that proposal was shot down but we must be vigilant as there is pressure on the government at all times due to still fewer numbers joining the army,” the official noted.

A public outcry last year, forced the army call off an attempt to glamourise the profession among school students.