Child soldiers and Velupillai Prabhakaran

By Mohan Gunaratnam

(February 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Here below is a feature that appeared nearly three years ago in the Colombo media recounting how Velupillai Prabhakaran came to enlist child soldiers. It appeared as an editorial comment as the Mavil Aru crisis began to emerge which was a serious miscalculation by the LTTE that laid the seeds for the inevitable demise of the Eelam adventure.

The CFA was a fool’s paradise to which Ranil Wickremasinghe fell a victim when Norway tried to pull a bunny out of the hat for Prabhakaran. If there are hundreds held hostage today and most of them could perish, those who designed the CFA must take the blame; no one can talk peace with Prabhakaran; no one should ever. The CFA betrayed the people of Wanni and this horrendous chapter will go down in the history of Sri Lanka as one where a government indirectly caused the slaughter of thousands of civilians.

When the current horror is brought to an end, the people of Wanni or what left of them will have to seek a massive compensation from the Governments of Norway and Sri Lanka to re-develop Wanni which has been the granary of Sri Lanka.

Those who have any doubts about the intentions of Velupillai Prabhakaran, they have to only trace back the years when he tracked the liberation trail by spilling the blood of fellow Tamils from political leaders to intellectuals, professionals to government officials, lamp post executions and gathering children as soldiers. How can this man be ever considered as the spokesman of the very people on whom he has heaped up so much horror?

Furthermore, have the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora organizing pro-LTTE demonstrations under the guise of demanding a ceasefire in western capitals like Washington, Ottawa, London and Paris ever considered sending their own children to the Tiger frontlines in Wanni? Have they ever demonstrated against the LTTE enlistment of children? Have they spoken for the miseries the Wanni people have been suffering for years under the LTTE? Are they aware how the Wanni court system functioned, the torture cells and prisoners held tied to chains?

How can they demand that Prabhakaran speaks for the Tamils? In order to stake his claim as the sole spokesperson of the Tamils, he killed people. Just like Pol Pot wanted to write the Cambodian history from zero and then beginning it from him, Prabhakaran was determined to give birth to the New Tamils from his Valvettiturai smuggler backyard and his dream was a Mafia Eelam in South Asia.

Wanni’s wellbeing is not certainly reflected by the pro-LTTE Diaspora and the way it has supported Prabhakaran, it has even confiscated any claim it may have to speak for their kith and kin in Sri Lanka.

Child soldiers are falling like flies on the frontlines but where is Prabhakaran?

An Editorial Comment

Way back in the late seventies following the murders of Mayor Alfred Duryappah and some police officials encouraged by the strident Tamil politicians of that time Velupillai Prabhakaran stepped into the limelight as the potential saviour of the Tamils. Even his bank robberies were considered as acts of great bravery and courage.

In his dream for a Tamil Liberation Army, aware that no Tamil parent would allow their children to take to arms even if the cause was good, Prabhakaran began focusing on the tuition centres that became very attractive to Tamil teenagers, some for studies but many as places they could meet their peers which was taboo with Tamil families. Many of these tuition centres were set up by young men for obvious reasons and the parents were blind to what were happening at these places.

It was here he planted the “Prabhakaran Cult” and from which he began to eye the orphanages as an excellent source to develop his armed cadres. The rest is history as to how he took over the various orphanages in the north and east and called them Chencholai after one of his military lieutenants who lost her life in an armed campaign. What this man has done to children and young people has now become an extremely agonizing loss to the Tamil community.

Commenting on the current chaotic situation in the north and east, the Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka said that the large number of child combatants killed in the recent battles indicated that the LTTE had become heavily dependent on children for war. Lack of experienced combatants, he said, had resulted in the organization turning to children out of desperation

While speaking to The Island newspaper in Colombo he estimated the LTTE strength to be between 8,000 and 10,000 of which only around 2,000 were battle-hardened cadres

Answering a question whether he advocated a military solution to the crisis that had dragged on for more than two decades, he said as an Army of a Sovereign state it has to defend the territorial integrity of the country while the political leadership would strive for a negotiated settlement. He stressed that there could be only one Army in the country.

Time and again we had stated in no uncertain terms that there were about 5000 child soldiers in Wanni ready for battle in respect of uniforms and arms but too young and immature for armed warfare. There were also young females in readiness for suicide bombing brainwashed to undertake any mission their handlers assign to them. They too were brought up in their Wanni premises to look up to Prabhakaran as a kind of demigod.

We drew the attention of the UNICEF to this state of affairs and instead of taking a convoy of coaches to Kilinochchi and demanding that the children be freed, their officials in Sri Lanka merely gave regular statements soon after their sumptuous breakfasts. Even the members of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission hardly showed interests in child soldiers.

It took LTTE Godfather Erik Solheim to chide and reprimand the LTTE after the bombing raid on the Puthukudiyiruppu Forest Military Academy, which up to 2004 was an orphanage. It was then he spoke about child soldiers enlisted by the LTTE. It would be foolish, perhaps hypocritical or even height of cheek, to wail over the deaths of children and young people when corrective actions should have been taken. Wanni families were the worst affected because an insensitive government persuaded by Norway gave a free hand to the terrorist organization to commit dreadful crimes on the people, and in most cases taking away their children.

The government should never have allowed the LTTE to control that area according to its whims and fancies. It was utter stupidity. It was the government that was providing all the services in the Wanni district. The LTTE only ran a sham court and a kind of police unit, both of which became agents of terror to the people of Wanni.

The latest news we have is that the Air Force has launched a series of strikes on Muhamalai and Nagarkovil and there was some firing from the Tigers too. Senior Coordinator, Military Operations, Major Upali Rajapakse said that they are quite familiar with the tactics and the strategy adopted by the LTTE. “They will once again attack from a different front like Thanankilappu or Ariyalai after the attacks they mounted from a different location failed,

`They are engaged in what is termed, in military parlance, `harassing fire`. This is a tactical move by the enemy. They will change their modus operandi and direction since they have suffered heavy losses during last few days. It is likely they will launch a fresh attack from Thanankilappu and Ariyalai and the troops are quite aware of their moves,` he said.

It was the sad observation of Major Upali Rajapakse that 50 per cent of the LTTE strength is made up of child soldiers and large number of them had been killed in the current confrontations. We had referred to them as the gun fodder and trench fillers of the LTTE. We have had reports that if these young soldiers refused to move they would be shot from the back and quite a number of them die of wounds on their backs.

After the Security Forces ordered them to surrender, a considerable number of them had given themselves up at Army check points, particularly in the East. As for the ICRC, they claimed that they couldn`t move in to the affected areas to take over the bodies of LTTE cadres, as the A-9 route has been closed. The Army said there were 98 bodies and some had started decomposing. Troops may have disposed some of them, an Army source said

The situation in the East was reported to be relatively calm, but the troops were engaged in expanding their area of control in Mavil Aru to provide a continuous flow of water to the people who had been deprived of water and livelihood for around a fortnight

As for the Wanni leadership, LTTE`s strength is depleting day by day. They are also afflicted with serious leadership problems and the dissention among cadres is a major issue for them. Parallel commanders are now fighting among each other for the position of Overall Military Commander, which was earlier held by Commander Karuna, who is now waging a war against the Wanni faction. What is remarkable, however, is that Velupillai Prabhakaran who a quarter of a century ago began to eye children and young people for his liberation army has not emerged at all from his hole somewhere in Mulliyawalai in the Mullaitivu district.

There is every reason to believe that he has been confined against his wishes or in a state where he cannot comprehend anything properly. Helped by the Tamil Diaspora and some forces to which Norway evidently is proxy, the LTTE is certainly involved in a massive fraud against the Tamil community.
-Sri Lanka Guardian