Sri Lanka's children being recruited into war

Escalating fighting in Sri Lanka has renewed fears of a recruitment drive for child soldiers to fuel the seemingly unending separatist war.

International aid agencies say the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has stepped up its recruitment of boys and girls aged below 17 for combat as the violence worsens.

In one such case, authorities fear a 15-year-old boy who was allegedly kidnapped when he went on a Catholic pilgrimage two weeks ago to a shrine located within rebel-held territory has been forced to become a child soldier.

The Roman Catholic Church was trying to secure the release of the child.

In another case, Amnesty International has expressed concern for the safety of three children under 12 who were believed to have been enlisted by the Tigers earlier this year. The rebels have denied any knowledge of them.

And the defence ministry has said that within a month, a 15-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy fled their Tiger captors and surrendered to the army in the eastern district of Batticaloa.

"Out of the 39 Tiger cadres who have surrendered to security forces this year, eight are boys and girls below 18 years," said ministry spokesman Sanath Karunaratne. "The youngest was a 12-year-old boy."

Fourteen of the 18 Tigers killed in an army commando-style operation in December were teenaged girls, Karunaratne said, adding that the remains of the victims were returned to the rebels through the International Red Cross.

As the latest round of fighting escalated in July, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Tamil rebels had stepped up recruiting children as young as 12 years, breaking a pledge three years ago not to enlist children.

UNICEF Director General Carol Bellamy in a statement in July urged the LTTE to live up to its commitments to the Secretary General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Olara Otunnu in May 1998.

The LTTE leadership promised Otunnu, who had visited rebel-held areas, that it would not recruit children below 17 and that no one under 18 would be deployed as combatants.

"In the years since Mr. Otunnu's visit, the UN has observed increasing recruitment activity in and near schools and has received an increasing number of complaints from parents," Bellamy said.

Police said the Tiger guerrillas had also deployed its "baby brigade" in the devastating attack Tuesday on a police station in the east of the island in which 15 constables and two station employees were killed.

Diplomatic sources here said they expected fighting between government troops and the Tigers to further escalate as Norway's attempts to broker peace remained deadlocked.

The conflict took a turn for the worse when the rebels devastated the island's only international airport on July 24, destroying four civilian jets and damaging two more. The attack started at the adjoining military airbase.

The LTTE has used its successes in 1999 and 2000 to entice youngsters to take up arms, said the University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR) group in Jaffna.

"Unlike in the earlier phases of fighting where small arms played a dominant role, most of the young being killed on the LTTE side are now brought home in sealed coffins as they had been mangled by shelling," the UTHR added.

It said more than 1,000 rebel fighters were hospitalised with serious injuries following the LTTE's bitter offensive that eventually saw the fall of the military's main garrison of Elephant pass on April 22, 2000.

The UTHR, which the Tamil Tigers deem treacherous, accuses the LTTE of gross rights abuses.

"There are human rights violations under the government of Sri Lanka. But here (in rebel-held areas), there is not a shadow of human rights," the UTHR said.

"This is no more evident than in the manner in which children are recruited for military service."