Travesty of Justice

Travesty of Injustice …

By Dr. Chandre Dharmawardana

Attempts are being made by some expatriate Tamils and their conniving Canadian politicians to white wash the acts of the Tamil Tigers who are even today banned as a terrorist organization.  A new, false narrative of the Tamil Tigers is being built, with the claim that the Tamils suffered genocide at the hands of the Sri Lankan government.  However, the true reality is that it was the Tamil Tigers themselves who dealt death to their own.  One facet of the genocidal act of the Tamil Tigers was to destroy their wounded and maimed soldiers.  Another facet was to snuff a whole generation by recruiting them as child soldiers and throwing them into certain death.

There is a wealth of material about how the Tamil Tigers destroyed their very next generation, and we aim to bring this material written by Tamils themselves, before a wider public, step  by step, and in sequence.  In this article we feature the testimony of a Tamil expat writing from Holland.

Anatha-vinayagan (AV) submitted a Masters Thesis in 2013 to Maastritch University, Holland, on Tamil child soldiers used by the separatist Tamil terrorist group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).  He dedicates his thesis to his brother who was abducted by the LTTE, using the following words.

“In loving memory of my cousin brother, Satheeswaran Selvarajah (Kobi), who was abducted by the Tamil Tigers to fight a vicious civil war, used as an expendable frontline troop member and lost his life at the tender age of 17 in the ill-famous Second Battle of Elephant pass in December 1999.”

We quote AV who submitted his dissertation in 2013 to the Dutch University.

“The LTTE have long used the practice of child soldiers against the well-equipped and financially robust Sri Lankan Army.9 The LTTE harassed and threatened families had resisted and boys and girls were abducted from their homes at night or while walking to school.10 Their childhood was ruthlessly destroyed, as they were forced to kill on the battlefield, rather than playing on the cricket field and emotionally deformed, instead of cherishing the memories of school romance.”

The first phase of the recruitment of children by the LTTE began as a reaction against the arrival of the so called Indian peace Keeping Force. India had initially trained and equipped the Tamil Tigers in clandestine camps in the hope of using them as a lever for controlling the Sri Lankan government.  The latter had become pro-Western, during a time when India under Indira Gandhi had been distinctly pro- Soviet.  However, once the LTTE became an established terrorist group in the Northern Peninsula, India found that Prabhakaran was not going to be a puppet in their hands.  When the armed forces of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) cornered Prabhakaran in a military offensive, India used the occasion to militarily intervene and make GOSL obey its diktat, and also save Prabhakaran and show him that the LTTE has to tow the line set  by India which has come to rescue him.

Prabhakaran as well as J. R. Jayawardena, the Sri Lankan President, agreed to the demands of Rajeev Gandhi, and signed the Indo-Lanka accord.  An Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) arrived in Sri Lanka.. However, within a short time after returning to Sri Lanka, Prabhakaran reneged on the agreement and decided to resist the IPKF.

We quote AV:

The LTTE reportedly began recruiting large numbers of women and children after declaring war against the 100,000-strong Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in October 1987.  The IPKF was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990, formed under the mandate of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord signed between India and Sri Lanka in 1987, aiming at putting an end to the Sri Lankan Civil War.  The main task of the IPKF was to disarm the different militant groups, not just the LTTE.  This intervention by the IPKF forced the LTTE to realize that they faced manpower shortage, leading to recruitment of children.

Recruitment rose again in 1990, when the conflict erupted for the second time.  Another way of subtle indoctrination and recruitment was through rebel “orphanages”, such as in Sencholai.  During school holidays, children were instructed to use weapons, trained in psychological warfare, combat skills, and other military activities.. UNICEF estimates over 6.000 cases of child recruitment between 2003 and 2008.. The LTTE denied any recruitment charges for a long time, especially after strong public pressure, spearheaded by UNICEF.  The LTTE alleged that the children were not serving for military purposes, saying that they are volunteers handling “non-combatant work”.

After the 2002 ceasefire agreement between the LTTE and Sri Lankan Government many children were simply abducted, as unarmed LTTE members were allowed to enter government-controlled territory, reportedly enabling child kidnappings to take place.

Child conscription by the LTTE followed three cyclical patterns, dependent on its own internal recruitment cycles which coincide with temple festivals and school holidays, on domestic, political and military imperatives.

The LTTE carried out vigorous campaigns in Tamil communities in LTTE-dominated areas to promote their cause, often designed to attract children as new recruits. These campaigns included special events honoring LTTE heroes, parades of LTTE cadres, public displays of war paraphernalia,   and street theater:  a militarization of daily life took place.

In schools, LTTE cadres often gave speeches and showed videos, and gave teachers “history” lessons about the LTTE to administer to their students.

 Many children were attracted to the perceived status or glamour of serving as an LTTE cadre, or were persuaded that it was their duty to join the nationalist struggle as part of the LTTE.  Children from disadvantaged background were particularly vulnerable to LTTE.  It was an attractive option in which financial packages are offered to both, the enrollers and their families.  The LTTE created a sense of guilt inculcated in the children’s mind to make them believe that resorting to arms at the earliest is the only way to defend their families and communities.

In Canada, the remnants of the LTTE who have acquired refugee status have engaged themselves in Canadian politics, using expatriate Tamils as the vote bank they use to get the support of conniving politicians like Patrick Brown of Brampton, or Mayor Tory of Toronto.  The pro-LTTE Tamil groups are using their early experience in Sri Lanka and are trying to initiate an “education week”, to teach the “history” of their terror movement as a liberation movement to expatriate children.  Although it may be hard for them to “recruit” Canadian Tamil children as soldiers in the same was as Prabhakaran did, the objective is to create militant youth groups for achieving their separatist objectives, orchestrated from afar. So, the “Tamil Education week” proposed for the month of May, every year, and funded by the Canadian tax payer, is a part continuation of the child soldier recruitment policy of the LTTE, but in a new guise, made more palatable for the Canadian public.