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Child Soldiers of The Liberation
Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
According to an April 2000 estimate, there are some 2,000 children in the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam's (LTTE) ranks. This is not unique to LTTE
or Sri Lanka but is a global phenomenon. The number of child soldiers, some
as young as seven years, participating in the various armed conflicts around
the world is estimated to be about 300,000.
Participation in armed conflicts, even voluntarily, by children below the
age of 15 is an offence, according to the Geneva Convention, 1948, and the
two amendments to it, adopted in 1997, as well as Article 38 of the UN
Convention on Rights of the Child. In the decade ending 1999, nearly two
million child soldiers were killed in the various conflicts, worldwide.
Children are recruited at a time when there is a significant reduction in
the numbers of available adults. Besides, analysts point that advances in
technology have facilitated the recruitment of children. Weapons, now in
vogue in armed conflicts, are light and automatic, and hence, easy for
children to handle. Also, children are less likely to disobey orders and can
easily be prodded to undertake daring assignments, many a time ending up in
death.
Children join armed conflicts for different reasons. While some sign up
voluntarily others are recruited by force. Those joining voluntarily do so
on account of the poor economic condition of their family, or because they
wish to avenge the suffering or death of a member of the family at the hands
of 'the enemy', or simply because of the thrill it gives. Indoctrination
through lectures at schools, screening of films, commemorative events such
as Heroes Day plays a significant role in attracting children into the
LTTE’s fold. Several accounts of from Sri Lanka support the above reasons.
Serious recruitment of children (and women) into the LTTE began after the
LTTE decided to take on the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which was sent to
the Island nation in 1987 as part of an agreement, between Sri Lanka and
India, that sought to resolve the ethnic conflict in the former.
Even earlier, children formed a part of the Tiger cadres. Child soldiers
were originally recruited into the LTTE’s baby brigade, commandeered by
Justin. But, after 1987, they were integrated with adult units. Initially
recruited from refugee children in India, they were reportedly sent to a
training camp in the southern Indian port town of Pondicherry. Supervised by
one Basheer Kaka of Trincomalee, the training then was non-military and
essentially concerned with physical exercises and education.
Child cadres in the LTTE perform various duties. At one end, they are
employed in the kitchen and in medical camps and are asked to do menial
jobs. Also, they are posted in the supplies division where they distribute
arms and ammunition to other cadres. Above these, they are assigned to
gather intelligence and fight alongside adult cadres. Reports indicate that
they also functioned as the bodyguards of Pottuamman, the LTTE’s chief of
intelligence.
Normally, a training programme runs through four months. At times, owing to
the exigency of immediate requirement on the battlefield, the programme was
cut short by three months. The cadres, children, begin their day early. They
are required to fall in at 5.00am. Thereafter, they go through physical
training followed by training in battle and field craft and parade drill.
Further into the day, child combatants read LTTE literature. Some more
physical training and instruction on communications, explosives and
intelligence gathering follow.
Induction onto the field commences with attacking less defended targets. For
instance, they are sent to attack villages that do not have any significant
armed cover. On the battlefield, the child combatants fought and died much
like the adult soldiers. They participated, and still do, in daring attacks
to capture weapons as well as territory.
The LTTE’s child soldiers saw their first recorded major action on November
22, 1990. In this attack on the Mankulam army camp, nearly a third of the
Sri Lankan troops were killed and the camp was vacated by troops after two
days of clashes. Their second major action was the attack on the strategic
Elephant Pass Military Complex less than a year later, on July 10, 1991. The
Tigers suffered heavy casualties in this attack. An estimated 550 LTTE
cadres, including children, were killed in these clashes. Learning from its
failures during the July 1991 operations, the LTTE changed the composition
of its attacking groups. It put the child cadres together with elite Black
Tigers cadres and scored astonishing results, one in 1993 and another in
1996––two army/navy complexes were overrun and an estimated US $ 100
million-worth arms and ammunition were seized by the Tigers. In the 1996
amphibious attack on the military complex in Mullaithivu, child soldiers
shot dead some 300 troops after they were disarmed.
The fiercest of all LTTE-fighting units, analysts have noted, is the Leopard
Brigade, or Siruthai Puli. It consists exclusively of children whose
unswerving loyalty to Tiger chief Prabhakaran and their commitment have
attracted considerable attention. Among their actions is the gunning down of
200 elite government troops on December 4, 1997, in Kanakarankulam, Wanni.
The child combatants themselves have suffered numerous casualties in various
clashes. In October 1995, in the attack on the Weli Oliya military complex,
regarded by analysts as the worst-ever set back to the child fighters, some
3,000 cadres, a vast majority of them children and women, were killed by
government troops. Official sources disclosed that in one battle alone, in
September/October, 1998, at Kilinochchi, over 500 child soldiers might have
been killed. Around the same time, in all, an estimated 1,700 LTTE cadres
had died in battles at Kilinochchi, Paranthan and Mankulam. The killed child
combatants, along with several women fighters, constituted the frontlines in
those battles. Soon after, the LTTE reportedly stepped up its recruitment
drive among children in the eastern Batticaloa district to make up for lost
cadres.
26 LTTE child soldiers, including four girls who surrendered to the armed
forces at Mankulam, in early October 1998, disclosed that the LTTE kidnapped
and recruited them into is fighting forces. Some of them were picked up from
their homes while some others were hustled into a waiting vehicle.
The surrender of these child soldiers was accorded international publicity.
Soon thereafter, at a meeting held in New York between Prof. G. L. Peiris,
Sri Lanka’s Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister, and Olara Otunnu,
the United Nations Secretary General’s Special Rapporteur for Children and
Armed Conflict, Otunnu expressed his disappointment at the LTTE’s breach of
pledge. The LTTE had earlier promised him that it would not recruit children
under 17 years of age and would not deploy them before they attained 18
years of age.
Despite its assurances, the LTTE, reports indicate, has not given up on
recruiting child combatants. A February 2000 report warned that the LTTE
would be targeting children in the Wanni, where it was reportedly organising
a vigorous recruitment drive. The report, citing the logic of numbers, said
that the LTTE, in order to, make up 10,000 lost cadres, between 1995 and
1999, would have to target some 30 per cent of the school-going children who
have come of age.
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