DINESH TELLS IPU CONFERENCE IN CHILE THAT NORTH AND EAST FOREIGN AID DONORS MUST DEMAND THE RELEASE OF CHILDSOLDIERS
By Walter Jayawardhana reporting from Los Angeles
April 18. 11.00 AM:Before any international aid given to the reconstruction and rehabilitation related to the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam donors must demand the immediate release of thousands of child soldiers held illegally by the rebel group, said Dinesh Gunawardena leader of the MEP addressing the sub-committee of the 108th Conference of the Inter Parliamentary Union held in Santiago, Chile.
Speaking under the topic of the conference, Trafficking of Children Internationally and Nationally, Sri Lanka’s opposition parliamentarian and former minister of the People’s Alliance government told world parliamentarians, the LTTE, the Sri Lankan rebels who were fighting for a separate state called Eelam had brought untold misery to poor Tamil parents in the Northern and Eastern provinces by kidnapping their children, some as young as ten years, from their homes, schools and public highways when the children go to attend their schools or tend to their farms.
Attending the globe’s largest parliamentary conference Dinesh Gunawardena told world parliamentarians that large numbers of these children were undergoing unprecedented misery in their lives in the camps they were sent to for military training. He said under the cruelty of the LTTE military commissars some had died by receiving gun shot injuries as punishment for attempting to escape the military garrisons. To instill fear among others, the children themselves had been asked to bury the children killed, the opposition parliamentarian charged. Dinesh Gunawardena said although the terrorist group had wanted to receive international aid nobody had been allowed to enter these military camps to find out how many children were undergoing military training against the wishes of their parents. Estimating at least 10,000 children have been put in the virtual prisons of the military camps of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam he said duplicitous policies of some Western nations might help the terrorist group to receive international aid while carrying on the most barbarous act of kidnapping children , recruiting them for military training, using them for cannon fodder in their military adventures and adding insult to injury by denying having them in the military camps.
Speaking further, Dinesh Gunawardena said both girls and boys some as young as 10 had been kidnapped from their homes and dozens of their parents had committed suicide or attempted to commit suicide due to the grief for their children who had been herded and taken away for military training while the government of the country was unable to help them by implementing its own laws.
Dinesh Gunawardena said every penny of the proposed international aid now being proposed for the Northern and Eastern provinces should be linked to the release of the last child being held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Dinesh Gunawardena charged it was unfortunate that the question of exploiting poor Tamil children had taken a back seat position in the so called peace process in Sri Lanka while it should have been taken up as one of the most priority matters at international level meetings.
The MEP leader said every penny of the proposed international aid now being proposed for the Northern and Eastern Provinces in Sri Lanka should have the pre-condition to the release of the last child being held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
