RIGHTS: Child Soldier Issue May Yet Snare Tamil Tigers

By Amantha Perera Reprint | | Print |

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Sep 1 2005 (IPS) - While the international community has given the benefit of the doubt to Tamil separatist rebels for the assassination of foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, last month, it may not be as forgiving on the issue of continued recruitment of child soldiers.

”I most certainly would think that the child soldier issue will have an impact on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)’s pursuit of international legitimacy,” Paikiasothy Saravanmuttu, director of the respected, Colombo-based think-tank, Centre for Policy Alternatives, said in an IPS interview.

Such is the gravity of the issue that Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission has decided to lobby the foreign ministry for a formal United Nations assessment of the state of forcible recruitment of child soldiers by the Tigers.

The Commission said that the decision to invite Karin Sham Poo of Norway, the current acting Special Representative of the Secretary- General on Children in Armed Conflict, was taken after a reported surge in child recruitment instances.

”The Human Rights Commission is deeply concerned that documented evidence of underage recruitment has continued, and is on the rise. Reports from regional offices of the Commission, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and NGOs in the north and east, point to an increase in recruitment in the last few months,” the Commission said.

According to Saravanamuttu, the recruitment of child soldiers would remain a key allegation against the Tigers. ”I think the U.N. is holding on for a year on the resolution on child recruitment, and during that year they are kind of serving notice, and we will see some sort of action once it is ratified”.

The LTTE, which has been waging a separatist war over the last two decades against Colombo, is accused of recruiting underage children into its military ranks in the north and the east of the country.

The bulk of the complaints are from the east where the Tigers have faced a serious threat to their power following the defection of the former eastern military wing commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, alias Karuna, in April 2004.

More than 100 cases of underage recruitment were reported from the north and east by UNICEF in July. Of that, 64 were from the main eastern city of Batticaloa, where cadres loyal to Karuna have been waging an internecine war against the Tigers, since the defection.

”Recent reports from the east show a dramatic increase in child recruitment, particularly during the temple festivals,” officials of the Commission said.

UNICEF officials in Colombo said they were concerned about the rise in recruitments and have urged both government and the Tigers to address the issue. ”The government and the LTTE have to sit at the peace table soon and begin discussions before it is too late,” UNICEF spokesman Jeffery Keele told IPS.

Colombo and the Tigers signed a truce agreement in February 2002 with Norwegian facilitation. Peace negotiations have, however, been stalled since April 2003 with the relationship sorely strained since the Karuna defection to the government side.

When Kadirgamar was assassinated in Colombo on Aug. 12, it added to tensions and the government blamed the Tigers who promptly denied involvement. With international urging, the two sides agreed to hold high-level talks for the first time since 2003.

Ironically, until the recent allegations, the Tigers had received commendations for a drop in child recruitment. Soon after the Dec. 26 tsunami, which affected Tamil-held areas the worst, recruitment levels had dropped to their lowest since monitoring commenced three years ago, Keele said.

The surge in recruitment in July, however, matched a pattern that was witnessed in 2004 when children were targeted at temple festivals in the east. Last year, the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) increased patrols and the presence of monitors at the festivals have deterred recruitment.

The Sri Lankan military said that the Tigers were targeting children in an effort to bolster cadre levels left depleted by the defection. ”The Tigers are facing a severe manpower problem,” military spokesman Brig. Daya Rathnayake told IPS.

Before he fled to government-held areas, Karuna released 2,437 child soldiers along with several thousand adult cadres from the organisation. After regaining control of the east, the Tigers have been focused on maintaining cadre strength, according to SLMM sources.

Around 60 percent of the LTTE fighting force was estimated to consist of underage children, the Sri Lankan army said in a report in June. It said that 40 percent of cadres killed in battles have been between the ages of nine and 18.

Until July, UNICEF had received 5,081 cases of child recruitment since the signing of the peace agreement.

The army said that during the ceasefire, 182 minors from the LTTE had surrendered to government forces.

The Human Rights Commission, however, said that it was also concerned about the treatment of children who surrender to government forces. ”Children are regularly harassed and when taken into custody, are sometimes subjected to repeated questioning and videotaping,” it said.

The LTTE has maintained that most children join voluntarily due to the dire economic and social circumstances in the war-ravaged north and east. The Tiger Peace Secretariat recently said children ”continued to seek refuge with the LTTE as that was the only place which provided them security from hunger, want and anti-social elements abusing (them)”.

”What we have to understand is that these areas do not offer these children any job opportunities and the economic development in the north and east is very slow, unlike in other parts of country, where children have several opportunities for their future, these children have nothing,” Keele said.

He admitted that under prevalent conditions in the north and east many children saw the LTTE as their main refuge but that the Tigers should provide shelter to them, rather than imparting military training and inducting them as soldiers.

UNICEF, together with the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE, commenced a rehabilitation programme for former child soldiers in 2003. However, three transitional camps set up in LTTE-held areas have been rendered defunct.

Only one centre, in the Tiger political capital Kilinochchi was operational. The other two located in Batticaloa and Trincomalee never received any children and are now being used as community centres, UNICEF said.

The Tigers have been mindful of the negative publicity generated by accusations like those made by the Commission and have constantly released children. Last week, they released 21 children to their parents in Kilinochchi.

”The LTTE and the LTTE Peace Secretariat have been jointly working to identify these underage recruits and hand them over to their parents,” the Tiger Peace Secretariat said in a statement.

The United Nations Security Council has established a monitoring and reporting mechanism that will ensure the protection of children exposed to armed conflict, a U.N. statement, released last month, said.

The mechanism will monitor grave violations by both government and insurgents and will focus on the killing or maiming of children, the recruitment or use of child soldiers, attacks against schools or hospitals, rape or other sexual violence against children.

In the past decade, two million children have been killed in situations of armed conflict, while six million children have been disabled or injured. More than a quarter of a million child soldiers are being abused and exploited today in situations of armed conflict around the globe.

Since 2003, more than 11 million children have been displaced within their own countries, and 2.4 million children have been forced to flee conflict and take refuge outside their home countries.

Part of the new U.N. resolution is a working group to oversee implementation of these measures and monitor progress in ending ongoing violations against children, including by the Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels in Nepal, the Karen Liberation Army in Burma as well as government troops in that country.

In the east, where child recruitment has been rampant, Banu, who replaced Karuna as the LTTE chief, has ordered that underage cadres should not be seen armed in public. Other senior LTTE leaders have said that minors should only be involved in political and office work.