FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2003
LTTE recruiting child soldiers: Monitors
PTI
COLOMBO: Tamil Tiger guerrillas recruited child soldiers amid a truce with the Sri Lankan government, but the overall ceasefire violations were going down, Scandinavian monitors said on Wednesday.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) forcibly enlisted boys and girls amid the ceasefire, said the Scandinavian monitoring team, which is known as the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM).
"The SLMM is still receiving complaints about child recruitment of the LTTE, and even though their numbers have clearly been going down in the last months, SLMM would like to see an immediate end to this practice," the monitors said in a statement.
They also said that they had noticed a drop in the number of ceasefire violations by both sides and described it as a "positive and ongoing development".
"The same downward trend can also be seen in the number of received complaints about child recruitment of the LTTE, where complaints went down from more than 60 in September to 38 in November and down to 28 in December."
The LTTE has been severely criticised for their practice of recruiting children below the age of 18 years despite an assurance to the United Nations Special Representative on Children in Armed Conflict, Olara Ottunu, in 1998 not to have child soldiers in Tiger ranks.
The Tigers have earlier denied recruiting children, but later admitted that underaged youngsters had joined them without disclosing their actual age. However, human rights groups have accused the rebels of systematic recruitment of children and some as young as nine years, into LTTE cadres.
The SLMM said that a total of 142 general complaints of truce violations were received in December, of which 118 were against the Tigers and the rest against government forces.
"The most common ruled violations by the LTTE in December were 10 cases of abduction of adults, six cases of child recruitment and two cases of harassment. The one ruled violation of the government forces in December was a case of harassment," the SLMM said.
The total number of violations from the beginning of the ceasefire until the end of 2002 was 556, the SLMM said. The LTTE was responsible for 502 of them while there were 54 violations by Sri Lankan troops.
The SLMM said that 313 violations by the LTTE related to child recruitment while there were 89 cases of abductions by the LTTE.
During the same period, the most common violation by government forces was harassment, of which there were 20 cases. Others included 13 cases of extortion and seven cases of restricting the movement of people.
The Tigers and the Sri Lankan government opened face-to-face peace talks in September. Child soldiers figured in talks conducted since then.
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