Tamil Tigers use child soldiers to fight their separatist war in Sri Lanka

The civil war in Sri Lanka is fairly obscure because unlike the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has little international importance. Sri Lanka, as far as I know, doesn't have any strategic significance. The war is awful for Sri Lankans themselves, but it doesn't affect most people outside the country.

One country that does have an interest is neighbouring India which has its own huge Tamil population. In fact, there are far more Tamils in India than in Sri Lanka.

Another country affected by the war is Canada. Since the 1980s the Tamil Tigers have used Canada's refugee system to establish themselves here where they commit extortion and other crimes to raise money for weapons and supplies.

Helped by unscrupulous politicians like Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis, Canadian supporters of the Tigers successfully opposed having the group listed as a terrorist organization until Stephen Harper's Conservative government finally put them on the terrorist list last year.

This infuriated Tiger supporters and during last year's Liberal leadership convention, Tamil delegates offered their support to any candidate who would remove the terrorist designation. Tamils were only one of several groups at the convention who put their ethnic interests above the national good.

Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority isn't blameless in this conflict. The Tamil drive for independence is largely a response to discrimination at the hands of the Sinhalese. The Sri Lankan army has committed its share of atrocities and Tamils have been murdered in ethnic riots.

As a Canadian, I'm not interested in picking sides. I don't care one way or the other whether Tamils separate from Sri Lanka. My concern is the way the Tigers exploit Canada for their own purposes.

I have blogged a lot about the Tigers, also known by the abbreviation LTTE, but I'm not sure many Canadians share my sense of outrage at how this terrorist group exploits our hospitality. I imagine the war in Sri Lanka is too far away for the average Canadian to care about especially since most Canadian Tamils are concentrated in Toronto.

That said, I think all Canadians should know just how despicable the Tigers are, because the crimes this terrorist group commits are often paid for by money raised here. Sri Lankan Tamils may have legitimate grievances against the Sinhalese, but nothing the Sri Lankan government has done justifies the Tigers' use of terrorist tactics.

Probably the worst thing the Tigers do is recruit children into their guerilla army. Some children join more or less 'voluntarily', but many are kidnapped from their families. In 2004, Human Rights Watch issued a report about the Tigers' recruitment of child soldiers. Here is an excerpt:

The LTTE has recruited and used children as soldiers throughout the two-decade-long civil war in Sri Lanka, and especially since October 1987 when the LTTE attacked and eventually forced the departure of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force from the northern Jaffna peninsula.

[. . .]

Under international law, recruitment of children to be soldiers is not only unlawful if the children are forcibly recruited. The LTTE is also violating international law by accepting into its ranks children who join “voluntarily.”

Children were initially recruited into what was known as the “Baby Brigade,” but were later integrated into other units. An elite “Leopard Brigade” (Siruthai puligal) was formed of children drawn from LTTE-run orphanages and was considered one of the LTTE’s fiercest fighting units.

UNICEF reports that more than 40 percent of children recruited by the LTTE are girls. The LTTE claims that the recruitment of girls and women is a way of “assisting women’s liberation and counteracting the oppressive traditionalism of the present system.” Female soldiers within the LTTE are known as “Birds of Freedom.” Unlike many other conflict situations where girls are recruited, sexual abuse of girls in the LTTE is rare, and relationships between the sexes are generally prohibited.

Prior to the cease-fire, the LTTE regularly deployed both boys and girls in combat. A major LTTE military operation against the Elephant Pass military complex in 1991 reportedly used waves of children drawn from the Baby Brigade and resulted in an estimated 550 LTTE deaths, mostly children. Assessments of LTTE soldiers killed in combat during the 1990’s found that between 40 and 60 percent of the dead fighters were children under the age of eighteen. A case study conducted for a major United Nations (U.N.) study on the impact of war on children found that children were reportedly used for “massed frontal attacks” in major battles, and that children between the ages of twelve and fourteen were used to massacre women and children in remote rural villages. The study cited reports indicating the use of children as young as ten as assassins.

The LTTE gives cyanide capsules and grenades to its soldiers, including children, with instructions to take the capsule or blow themselves up rather than allow themselves to be captured by the Sri Lankan Army.

The LTTE was among the first armed opposition groups to use its cadres, including children, to carry out suicide bomb attacks. Since the 1980’s, the LTTE has conducted some 200 such suicide bombings. Female soldiers, girls among them, were used for numerous such attacks, in part because they were less likely to undergo rigorous searches at government checkpoints.

Read all of the Human Rights Watch report. The part I excerpted comes from this section: LTTE Recruitment and Use of Children Before the Cease-fire.

See also:

Civil war in Sri Lanka - bought and paid for with Canadian dollars

Banning Tamil Tigers had positive effects but Ottawa and Toronto police should do more - Human Rights Watch

World Tamil Movement leader supports Tamil Tigers but denies his group funded them