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| Saturday, 15 January 2005 |
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by Simon Gardner The United Nations Children's Fund has received reports the Tamil Tigers are recruiting children displaced by last month's devastating tsunami as soldiers, and has warned the rebels to stop preying at shelters. UNICEF's Sri Lanka representative Ted Chaiban said he had received reports of three children recruited in the where the Tigers control large pockets of jungle. two had since been reunited with the family. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) relied heavily on child soldiers during their two-decade war for autonomy, an ethnic conflict which has been in limbo for three years thanks to a ceasefire. "Recruitment ... was an issue before the tsunami, it's an issue that continues to be of concern," Chaiban told Reuters in an interview yesterday. "We know of three cases of reported under-age recruitment that took place in the east." Two of the children, Ampara - the area hardest hit by the tsunami, where around a third of nearly 31,000 Sri Lankan victims perished - have already been reunited with their family, he said. But a 15-year-old girl who was in a camp for hundreds of displaced in the eastern rebel stronghold of Batticaloa is still missing. "She was seen speaking to LTTE cadres. She is no longer in the camp. The grandmother came and reported the case to us," Chaiban said. "We will be advocating strongly for her release." The rebels deny recruiting children, arguing that many youngsters lie about their age to join their cause. But since 2002 UNICEF has been tracking around 1,400 outstanding cases of children reportedly abducted by the rebels, more than 400 in 2004 alone. Some are as young as 10 years. The children's agency has resolved over 1,200 other cases. On a recent visit to one school-turned-camp for displaced near Kilinochchi, the Tigers' northern administrative nerve-centre, Reuters reporters saw teenage cadres wearing ammunition vests and wielding AK-47s standing guard as a top rebel commander paid a visit. "What (the Tigers) said to us is, if you see these cases, bring them to our attention immediately rather than going to the press because we want to be able to resolve them," Chaiban added. "And we said ... you send out instructions that no child that has been displaced by the tsunami should in any way be affected or harassed by any person," he added. - Reuters |
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