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Sri Lanka rebels still recruiting Children
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Sri Lanka rebels still recruiting Children
Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels are still forcibly recruiting more under-age fighters than they allow to go free, a rights group charged yesterday. The New York based Human Rights Watch said in a report the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have recruited thousands of child soldiers since agreeing to a ceasefire with the government in 2002 that halted two decades of bloody civil war. The Tigers deny recruiting children, arguing that any child fighters in their ranks have falsified their ages to join them and escape poverty.
“The ceasefire has brought an end to the fighting, but not to the Tamil Tigers’ use of children as soldiers,” Joe Becker, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of the report, said in a statement.
“Many Tamil families who expected a peace dividend now expect an unwelcome visit from armed rebel recruiters,” he added. The Tigers’ brutal war for autonomy killed more than 64,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more, and while the truce is holding, talks aimed at permanent peace stalled last year – leaving the peace process and the war in limbo.
Human Rights Watch says the Tigers launched an intensive campaign in April to re-recruit 2,000 child soldiers disbanded by a former top rebel commander, who broke away in April in an unprecedented challenge to the group’s northern leadership. The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF says the Tigers recruited 3,516 children between February 2002 and October 2004, and continue to draft hundreds more despite an agreement by the government and the rebels to help 50,000 war-affected children.
“It’s unacceptable. We have repeatedly asked them to stop it immediately, but they just don’t seem to care,” said UNICEF spokesman Geoffrey Keele.
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