Get tough with Tigers on child soldiers

In a highly welcome development the UN Security Council's Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict has warned the LTTE of grave consequences if it does not put an end to the recruitment of child soldiers.

This is the way the LTTE should be handled on account of its intransigence and we do hope the UN body concerned would carry out its threat of visiting the Tigers with grave consequences.

This is the moment to watch because the LTTE would be sparing no pains to replenish its depleting combat units in the wake of the military debacles it has suffered in Eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE which has no moral and other scruples would not hesitate to continue its outrageous practice of recruiting underage children to its combat cadres.

This has, of course, happened in the past but is likely to intensify in the future. If the international community intends cracking down on the Tigers, this moment should be seized. It should be able and willing to translate its threats into action before further atrocities are committed.

Unfortunately to date, the world community has showed little or no signs of carrying out its threats to come down hard on the Tigers on the question of child recruitment. Our memories are yet vivid of how UN Rapporteurs visited the country on issues relating to child soldiers some ten years ago and prevailed on the Tigers to end their pernicious practices in relation to children.

We regret to note that the international community has failed to keep-up the pressure on the LTTE on this score. As a result, child recruitments have continued apace.

We hope the UN has drawn the necessary inferences from these lapses. The LTTE is simply not going to reform or conform to acceptable conduct unless and until it is convinced that the world means business when it says that it intends getting tough with the Tigers. Stern, punitive measures should be imposed on the Tigers and that too very unrelentingly.

We hope the international community has realised once and for all that the Tigers are not going to crumble under what is called moral pressure. The LTTE is a militaristic outfit which would not desist from using even the most abominable forms of terror to achieve its objectives, unless biting and costly punitive measures are clamped on it. Its culture of terror is so ingrown that only countervailing and tough law and order measures would compel the LTTE to change.

So we call for a firm collective resolve on the part of the world community while dealing with the LTTE. Generally speaking, it is the world's failure to crack down hard on the Tigers which has induced them into running amok all these years.

In fact, a negotiated solution to the conflict could have been worked out long ago, if the world community had collectively taken the Tigers to task. It is not too late, though, to get tough with them.