Demo to release children

by Amal Jayasinghe
COLOMBO, Oct 6 (AFP) - Tamil Tiger rebels abducted 15 students to boost their ranks a day after freeing 49 child soldiers under a foreign-funded demobilisation program, the monitors of Sri Lanka’s truce said Monday.

The Norwegian-led Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission said about 250 parents and students staged a demonstration in the town of Valachchenai Monday demanding the release of the children abducted on Saturday.

"Our monitors went to the scene and were told that the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) forcibly took away 15 children and only three of them had been freed," the monitors’ spokeswoman Agnes Bragadottir said.

She said the truce monitors were trying to arrange a meeting between the Tiger leadership and the Tamil parents in a bid to secure the release of the children.

The children were taken away barely 24 hours after the Tigers ceremonially released 49 boys and girls in their political headquarters of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres (206 miles) north of Colombo, to a halfway home organised by UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The latest abductions came despite repeated assurances from the LTTE leadership that the rebels were not interested in a "baby brigade." The Tigers made a 1998 pledge not to recruit child soldiers to the UN special representative on children armed conflict, Olara Ottunu.

UNICEF said Friday that they names of 1,155 children who had been allegedly forcibly recruited by the LTTE despite a truce with government troops since February 23 last year.

The conscription of children is regarded a violation of the truce brokered by Norway which is trying to secure a political settlement to the island’s ethnic conflict which has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.

"Every report of underage recruitment is of concern to UNICEF and jeopardises the success of the action plan for children affected by war," the UN agency said in a statement Friday.

On Friday, middle-level LTTE leaders joined UN diplomats and government officials to launch the first "transit home" for child fighters.

The 27 girls and 22 boys released to the home were the first batch of children demobilised by the Tigers under the 14-million-dollar project funded by UNICEF.

The UN agency plans to open two more such centres in the island’s east.

"This is a big day for the children who have been among the people at most risk during the conflict," Ted Chaiban, the head of UNICEF in Sri Lanka, said while opening the transit home.

"But there are still cases of recruitment and it has to stop," he said. "We need to see an end to child soldiers in Sri Lanka."

Both the LTTE and the Colombo government agreed in their fifth round of peace talks in Berlin in February to allow UNICEF a greater role in addressing problems faced by children affected by the war.

The SLMM has reported more than 300 cases of child conscription by the LTTE in violation of the ceasefire.

The London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in May that accountability and child soldiers remained problems in Sri Lanka although the general rights situation has improved under the truce.