LTTE Recruitment and Use of Children

[By V.Thangavelu, Canada]

Toronto, Canada

Ms Jo Becker
Advocacy Director in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch
USA.

Dear Ms. Jo Becker,

Let me first thank you and the HRW for voicing support for human rights around the globe. I appreciate your humanitarian service.

In your latest report you have taken to task the US government that “It’s time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The United States has to get serious about prosecuting people implicated in prisoner deaths and mistreatment.”

The US government is the worst offender of human rights and democratic norms. The invasion of Iraq by US after short-circuiting the UNO is both illegal and immoral. US occupation forces have carpet bombed Iraq cities with impunity and thousands have been killed.

I don’t know your overall stand on this illegal war and the killing of Iraqi civilians under the façade of promoting democracy, but you ought to devote all your energies to this single criminal act of US President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

I was not present at the meeting you held last Sunday (December 12, 2004) at the Scarborough Civic Centre as I was out of town. But from the reports I have read and heard first hand I think you did not do your home work well. What is worse your report on LTTE child recruitment was full of fiction, hearsay and one-sided. Your aim seems to be to magnify and exaggerate your report many times over just to slander and discredit the LTTE rather than to uphold the rights of ‘child soldiers.’ When you indulge in such reckless reporting you lose credibility even where you may have a valid point or two.

There is suspicion that you embarked on this wild-goose chase in Toronto at the bidding of confirmed anti-LTTE elements, some of whom were also present at the said meeting.

You yourself has confessed that recruitment of children under the age of 18 is taking place in 60 or more countries that includes US, UK, Sri Lanka etc. . . . If this is so should you not first ask those countries to stop recruitment of child soldiers before asking non-state players like the LTTE to cease recruitment? But your thinking appears to be that it is easy to arms-twist LTTE compared to powerful states.

Your quotes from ‘terrorism expert’ Rohan Gunaratna’s book “LTTE Child Combatants,” (Jane’s Intelligence Review, July 1998) was in bad taste. You should know his background before rushing to quote him. He is an unashamed champion of Sinhala racism and a confirmed LTTE baiter. To quote him in support of your report is like quoting the devil to support the scripture!

You left off the hook the Sri Lankan government which is the cause of all deaths and destruction in the Northeast. It is the Sinhalese governments which used military force to suppress all democratic and peaceful protests by the Thamils. Had the Thamils enjoyed even a modicum of human rights under the tyrannical rule of majoritarian Sinhala government there would have been no war to begin with. The question of child soldiers also would not have arisen. In 1995. President Chandrika Kumaratunga unleashed a bloody war on the Thamil people under the slogan of “War for Peace” that lasted for over two years. It was the denial of the most basic rights of the Thamil people that forced them to take arms to defend themselves. The LTTE merely spearheaded this military campaign and acted as the vanguard force.

It would not be a bad idea to suggest that HRW concentrate its energies to identify the root cause of the conflict and take the Sri Lankan state to task for using military force to solve political problems. Conventional wisdom dictates that HRW treats the disease and not the symptoms.

You have said that you were fishing for a solitary non-partisan Thamil representative , but could not find one. It is not understood why you were looking for a non-partisan Thamil representative. The best course of action would have been to talk on a one to one basis with Thamil community activists and solicit their support.

Your approach was wrong from ab initio and you should have learnt lessons from your experience from a similar meeting you held in London. The whole episode is a sad commentary on your competence and tactfulness. It is time you reflect on your failed missions and think of a better stratagem to tackle this emotive and controversial subject.

Your report is replete with pretended self-pity. For example your claim “ The deaths of numerous child combatants during the internecine fighting between the Vanni LTTE and Karuna’s faction highlights the willingness of the LTTE leadership not just to recruit children, but to use them in battle” is outlandish, highly exaggerated and baseless accusation against the LTTE. The whole world knows that only a handful of cadres got killed on both sides since the fighting did not last for more than a few days. Karuna ran away without offering battle and he himself has said that he did not fight because he did not want a fratricidal war!

The unkindest cut in your report was your call to the Thamil Diaspora to “Consider the appropriateness of channeling economic assistance through agencies, such as the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, that are linked to the LTTE.” I wonder whether you have given sufficient thought to this profoundly appalling suggestion that borders on sadism! Your falsified logic shows your utter contempt and insensitiveness to the very livelihood of these children who subsist on TRO support. If your suggestion is implemented these children will face starvation making your remedy worse than the disease!

I wish to tell you that if not for the financial support by the Thamil Diaspora via the TRO towards the care of these children, they would not have survived the bloody war!

The Tamil people have been subjected to unprecedented oppression, military operations, innumerable displacements, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, torture, mass massacre etc. Currently thousands of families and children are living in refugee camps and welfare centres in government controlled areas. These children and their parents are unable to re-settle in their homes because the armed forces have not vacated them in violation of the ceasefire agreement. The HRW had turned a blind eye to the miseries of these poor and hapless Thamils.

Finally I suggest you to talk to the LTTE which has signed an agreement with the UNICEF to rehabilitate existing ‘child soldiers’ and turn over under-aged children to special centres.

Yours truly,
V.Thangavelu, Canada
President - Thamil Creative Writers Association
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Also Read : Tamil Tigers Forcibly Recruit Child Soldiers - Human Right Watch - In English - In Tamil

14 December 2004