Traumatic experiences of Tiger child soldiers
I'm only 16. They gave me a rifle. It was heavy. They
said we had to go forward. If we came back, they would shoot us'Tamil
children as young as 11 were forced at gunpoint to fight for the Tigers
in Sri Lanka's civil war. Survivors talked of their ordeal to Gethin
Chamberlain in Ambepusse.
Darchiga Kuken was sheltering in a bunker in the
Mullaitivu area when a group of about 20 Tiger child soldiers arrived
and demanded that she went with them.
Front line
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Darchiga Kuken, a
former Tiger child soldier interned at the Ambepusse
rehabilitation centre after escaping from the rebels.
Picture by Gethin Chamberlain |
"I was sick with chicken pox. My mother and father
were screaming and crying, saying that I was sick and pleading with them
not to take me," she said. The men went away. And then at 5 p.m. on
March 14, they came back. They called me to come out and then they
grabbed me and put me in a jeep. I started to cry. I was shouting:
'Mother, father, help me."
The 16-year-old is now being held in what the
Government describes as a 'rehabilitation centre', a jungle camp built
on a hillside outside the town of Ambepusse in the South of the country.
Here children like her, who were forced to fight on the front line in
the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka, gave the Observer compelling
evidence of war crimes committed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE).
The camp currently houses 95 children, with another
200 on their way from internment camps around the town of Vavuniya in
the North of the country.
LTTE suspects
Despite international concerns over the treatment of
LTTE suspects, the children appeared to be well treated and were able to
speak freely when the Observer visited the camp on Thursday. The most
distressing sight was a young boy howling in pain on the floor of one of
the huts; his friends said that he had recently arrived and still had a
piece of shrapnel lodged in his skull from the recent fighting.
The accounts of these boys and girls who surrendered
to the Sri Lankan Army were shocking. They say they were dragged
screaming from their families and sent into action with only a few days
of basic training. The older members of the LTTE warned them to keep
firing and advancing, or they would be shot by their own side from
behind.
Those who did try to escape said they were fired on by
their own side.
Children who were recaptured had their hair shaved off
to mark them as deserters and boys were beaten.
LTTE cadres
Darchiga said she was shot in the stomach by the army
two days after arriving on the front line, having been forced to pick up
a rifle and go forward to fight. She said LTTE cadres left her bleeding
for four hours before she received any medical treatment.
According to her testimony, the Tigers had warned
every family that those children who could carry a weapon were expected
to join up, regardless of age. Some as young as 11 and 12 had been
taken, she said. "They told families that one child was enough. If they
had five children, they would take four and leave just one."
She was taken to a training camp at Mullaivaikal,
where nine days of basic military training were interrupted by frequent
air attacks. On the morning of March 24, she was sent to the front.
Deserters
"I was scared and thought that I would die now and
would never see my parents again. They had scared us and said we
shouldn't sleep because the army would come and cut our throats."
She spent the first day hiding in a bunker, then she
was pushed forward because the senior Tiger cadres said they were
running out of fighters.
"They gave me a rifle. It was very heavy. They
threatened us that we had to go forward and shoot; if we came back, they
would shoot us themselves.
"I went a few hundred yards and hid behind a coconut
tree. I saw the army coming and I was very scared and I was lying down
trying to hide, but then they shot me in the stomach.
"I started screaming because of the pain, but the
cadres told me to shut up because the army would hear me. They gave me a
cloth to put on the wound. There was a lot of blood. It was four hours
before they took me to the hospital at Matalan."
On April 13 she escaped and ran back to her family.
The Tigers were looking for deserters, she said. "If they caught them,
they shaved their hair off and sent them back to the front line." Boys
also received a beating.
LTTE membership
She finally managed to escape with a group of
civilians, but only after the Tigers had fired on them. She was
separated from her family, who were sent to the internment camps at
Vavuniya, and taken to a court, which ordered her to be detained at
Ambepusse for a year - the standard treatment for those who confess to
LTTE membership, even if they had been coerced.
Ravindram Vajeevan, 17, said he arrived at Ambepusse
on April 9 after escaping from the Tigers four days earlier. He had a
large scar on his left arm where he had been shot by his former comrades
as he ran away.
He had been taken from his family in Mullaitivu on
March 29, as fighting raged around the shrinking no-fire zone and LTTE
numbers dwindled. A large group of men arrived at the house, he said,
and dragged him from the bunker where he had been sheltering.
"They hit me and my mother was crying and I was
crying, but they said I had to go to fight. My neighbours tried to stop
them, but they said they would shoot. Then they fired in the air," he
said.
He was taken to a camp with about 70 other young boys
and taught how to make a bunker, how to handle a rifle, how to escape
from an ambush and how to stage an attack. They were told that if they
did not fight they would be shot from behind, he said. On the fifth day,
he escaped.
Our parents
"In the beginning, the LTTE were fighting for the
Tamils, but in the end they were just fighting for themselves," he said.
Thambirasa Jagadiswary, 20, and her brother Thambirasa
Thisanandan, 17, were reunited at Ambepusse after the Tigers took them
from their family.
Jagadiswary was taken in June 2008 and drafted into a
mortar unit before being captured; her brother was dragooned in February
this year. He had spent 15 days with the rebels before escaping and
surrendering.
Afterwards he was taken to Vavuniya with his parents.
"They told us there that those who were in the LTTE should register, so
I did," he said. "Then they told me they would separate us from our
parents."
"I was talking with my friends when they brought him
in," his sister said.
"All of a sudden I saw my brother and I started crying
and shouting and hugging him." Their mother remains in the internment
camp at Menik Farm.
Human Rights
These teenagers' revelations come days after the UN
Human Rights Council rejected a call for an investigation into
allegations of war crimes by both sides during the 26-year conflict and
accepted an alternative Sri Lankan Government resolution describing the
conflict as a "domestic matter that doesn't warrant outside
interference". The Sri Lankan military has also been accused of
committing war crimes by firing on civilians.
Among the traumatised and unwilling child soldiers of
the Tigers, there is just a desire for normality to return.
"I was one year with the LTTE and I must be one year
here," said Jagadiswary. "Now I would just like to find my mother and
get on with my life."
Observer, London |
