WHILE MEETING UNICEF, LTTE INTENSIFIED CHILD CONSCRIPTION MAKING PARENTS FLEE HOMES IN THE EAST.
(By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles)
While a United Nations Children’s Fund delegation was pleading with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at their headquarters in Kilinochchi to stop recruitment of children the rebels intensified its conscription of child soldiers in the Eastern province, forcing some families to flee out with their children, military sources said.
Military authorities said, nine families fled from Panichchankerni, in an LTTE occupied area June 28, Wednesday, the very day a three member United Nations Children’s Fund delegation was meeting LTTE leaders requesting them to stop recruiting under age children.
Military sources said members of nine families from Panichchankerni reached Mankerni Sri Lanka military road block and asked for protection for their families to save their children. Mankerni is on the border of the LTTE occupied area in the East.
The crowd included twelve girls and two boys accompanied by their parents. The helpless Tamil families told the military authorities that the LTTE who were on an intensified recruitment drive for children forced them to surrender their children to the rebel group that made them flee their homes to save them. They entered the government controlled areas to ask for protection, the parents reportedly told the government forces.
Detailing about the delegation’s discussions with the Tamil rebel group Unicef communication officer Junko Mitani told a news agency,"We emphasised the need to cease all underage recruitment and release all such children."
According to some UNICEF statistics the rebels in their secretive military barracks were holding 1358 under age children as child soldiers. But in February this year the United Nation’s Children’s Fund said since the Sri Lanka truce went into effect the rebel group had enlisted 5300 child soldiers. The LTTE releases a token number of children for public relations purposes claiming that those children came and requested them to be enlisted while actually they had been allegedly kidnapped from their schools or homes. During the month of June this year, the rebel group said they handed over 16 children within the ages of 15-17 back to their parents
Some reports indicate that some little children captured and brainwashed by the rebel group had been made to become suicide bombers over the years.
