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THE YOUNG: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
KILLINGS OF STUDENTS AND CLOSURE OF SCHOOLS
(The shooting of the Kokuvil Hindu student was done by an Indian soldier in
The Schoolboy who was Shot Dead: 14th May 1989
The Passing of a Militant Leader
On this same day, 17th June, a young boy, Gajendran Thiagarajah from
Note: From the Geneva Convention. Protocol 1, Part 1V,Section 11
Article 77 ‑ Protection of Children
One may hazard su1mnarising the developments between March to the present in the following manner: Following the challenge posed by the LTTE’s assassi-nation of two senior most civil administrators, (7th April and Ist May), the pro-IPKF party moved against the LTTE’s student base in schools. This was mainly the remnant of the SALT, a student organisation founded by the LTTE. At least 4 schoolboys were victims of political killings over the period lOth May to lOth June. These student activists had functioned semi-openly up to November 1988. With the killings, many SALT members and their friends who could afford it went to Colombo. The LTTE in turn responded by enforcing periodic boycotts of schools,called by notices issued in the name of ‘Students’ Associations. The shut-down was complete by the last quarter of June. Their demand was thatteachers and principals must guarantee the safety of students. This put theformer in an unenviable position. They did not have an organisation toprotect even the dignity of teachers. The Principals’ Association had notmet for months. Unlike the university which had organised itself and up toa point had been respected by all parties, the Principals had some thornyproblems. Not having met for months, the Association was no longer thecoherent organisation of bygone days, where the members were well known toeach other and could formulate ideas and strategies in an atmosphere oftrust. There were again serious problems posed by the LTTE itself, which had by then killed two teachers (Miss Chandradevi Chelliah & Mrs. Ratnasabapathy) for political reasons. Moreover there was a ban on making contact with the IPKF and groups involved in the provincial administration. If arrangements for the security of students were to be worked out, associations of teachers and principals would have to confront and negotiate withthe IPKF and the EPRLF. There was also the factor that when the two senior civil administrators were killed, the large number of people who felt strongly about it found themselves unable to protest through fear. Thus when the schoolboyswere killed, besides the fear, the community as a whole felt itself bereft of a rationale to voice protest. Even feelings were confused and muted.Several of the Principals in the Jaffna town area were however in the habit of consulting each other informally, and a number of them did meet the IPKF, only to find the experience mostly unhelpful. The IPKF denied all responsibility for the killings. Nor did it as the law enforcing authority acknowledge its obligation to seek out and punish or restrain the killers.
(The shooting of the Kokuvil Hindu student was done by an Indian soldier inpublic view, deliberately and at close range with no provocation).
Theprincipals were lectured to keep their schools ‘clean’. One conces~1on madewas that they would be informed in the event of a student of their schoolbeing detained. (Brigadier Kahlon, the former Town Commandant told theUniversity in his farewell address that, he may appear to have broken hispromise to keep them informed a number of times. He told them not todespair and to make some allowance for the speed of Indian Army bureacracy). Given the combination of’circumstances, the’teachers-and principalsfound themselves cornered into inaction. This gave additional fillip topropaganda chiding the teaching profession for its lack of effort andgiving the young in general a heightened sense of insecurity. helped on bythe conduct of the IPKF and its allies. The latter. by the manner in whichthey chose to respond to the adversary’s thrust left behind much resentment.Disruption of education meant that there were more idle children. and withother unhelpful political developments, they were regarded with growingsuspicion by the authorities. Where there was action the danger to chidrenwas very real. In Vadamaratchi, recruitment by the LITE became a minorflood. Every provocation brough out the IPKF’s oppressive side with mechanical predictability. To many, particularly amongst the impressionable young, the LTTE’s cause appeared legitimate. The inducement to join theLTTE came from this as well as a variety of circumstances. particularly Personal ones. A common phenomenon in Vadamaratchi, where by this time the LTTE was moving around freely, was for idle children to follow the LITE around. When dead militants are commemorated, these children would help in the coconut palm decorations of streets. The possibilities are not hard to imagine.When the LTTE leader Bhavan was killed, the story got around that a numberof persons who had made contact with him were listed in his diary. now inthe IPKF’s hands. Such persons either fled to Colombo or joined in. Atleast in some IPKF camps until about March, a number of detainees testifiedto having been treated with reasonable tact. Some under suspicion had beenreleased on an undertaking by relatives that the detainee would be sent toColombo or abroad. However in recent months. little clemency was benefit exercised by either side. Unable to come up with an imaginative alternative to elemental vindictiveness, the IPKF party found itself under increasing isolation in Vadamarachchi. During the early part of June IPKF men in concealment apprehended twoyoung boys in the early hours of one morning, carrying grenades and walkingtowards the IPKF camp at Viyaparimoolai in Vadamaratchi. The boys werepromptly killed. A few days later the LTTE came with weapons to the nearbyThambasiddy library and held a firing exhibition and allowed the young tohandle the weapons. A mother who watched it said that several young personswere tempted to join. A well-built slightly lame young man in Pt. Pedro, an utterly harmlesssort was eking out a living doing a mason’s job and chores like fetching water. On three occasions hl’ was beaten by angry IPKF soldiers. once very badly. He had now opted for what he presumably thought was the relative safety of doing sentry duty for the LTTE.Recent recruitment by the LTTE has been mostly voluntary, with thequalification that such a term is dubious in application to juveniles.There may have been exceptions. A teacher in Udupiddy had a son who had satfor his O.L’s and was attending tuition classes. The son was one daymissing with several of his friends. The father’s efforts at tracing him failed. He later heard this story from another boy: “They used to be contacted at tuition classes and asked to come to different places for propaganda meetings. On the day in question they were taken and asked to get into a boat. The boy who returned with the story did so after strenuously pleadingthat he was asthmatic.
“Panicked perhaps by the new wave of recruitment by the LTTE followingthe disruption of education, and by political moves by the Sri LankanPresident, the IPKF and its allies hit upon the idea of press ganging orconscription.(See reports). Its first effect was to further discredit theauthority of the IPKF which was vested with enforcing the law. The conscription, although milder than it first appeared, was done without any sense of legal accountability. It put panic into parents and children alike, as children literally vanished from the streets.. As far as we could make out,most school children were eventually released after the parents made ‘con-tact. Further discredit fell on the IPKF when its leading officials deniedthat the IPKF had anything to do with it. It was well known that IPKF menwere part of several press ganging missions. The political fallout can be judged from the testimony of a senior journalist and trade unionist, now anNGO official residing in Killinochchi: “The local people were settling downto a balanced view of the situation. Not pro LTTE, not pro IPKF, but anindependent viewpoint. What the conscription raids did was to swing opinionsharply in favour of the LTTE. A number of youth who were made angry bythese raids decided to join the LTTE. One of my own sons was barely restrained by the incidental presence of my brother in law. “Once again leading members of the community found themselves confused in their response. Some felt that the militant groups allied to the IPKF had been cornered by the Sri Lankan President’s moves and the LTTE’s campaign. One senior educationist put it thus: “If you can turn a blind eye to one party taking in by unfair inducements, boys of 12 and 13 years who cannot. know what they are doing, how can you blame the other side for taking in more mature boys by force?” The point that those vested with authority to maintain the law must act with imagination and restraint was generally forgotten. These developments are closely linked to previous developments sketched out in earlier reports. India must bear a historical responsibilityfor its decisicn in 1983 to militarise young Tamils as a means of pressuring the Sri Lankan state.
The community as a whole still remains largelyinsensitive to this immense tragedy which is ultimately rooted in itsattitudes. When Indian officers with credentials from respectable institutes expatiate on the stages of insurgency and describe euphemisticallythe methods used in combating them, sometimes slipping into terms like‘minimum terror’; they are being, perhaps unintentionally, callous and ignorant -shockingly ignorant of their own role in magnifying the problem and sustaining it at present levels. The key word now is ‘use’. Referring to pro-IPKF groups, senior Indianmilitary officials talk glibly of using these gun toting rascals and disarming them. Explaining the misuse they have made of their official authority, senior persons in these groups blame those whom they fuse’. On theother hand a senior ideologue talks about his 5000 cubs with parentalfondness; while sympathetic intellectuals defend the recruitment of children in their early teens as being necessitated by the departure of many,adding that they are guided and ‘used’ without being allowed to make decisions. Anyone who wishes this community well, and wishes to be remembered well in historical restrospect, must urgently address the matter of the decimation of our youth.
In spite of the yawning differences that exist between the various groups,we think it apt at this time to take up the subject under one heading. Wehave pointed out in nearly all our reports that these groups are made up ofyoung men who were driven to carry arms by urges they little understood,and generally far beyond their control. Some of these young men in arms arejust 12 years old. Perhaps the most hurtful element in their fate is theinsensitivity of men, of the community itself. In a real sense they wereonce used by the community as a means of putting pressure on the Sri Lankanstate. But when they were defeated or unwanted, the natural tendency was todisown them as an external growth. It became quite acceptable in society todismiss the fate of a militant with some sentiment as “He who lives by thesword will perish by the sword, I’ without asking what made him carry thesword. The relationship between the people and the militants has been onegoverned by mutual suspicion and opportunism in which the entire communityhas been the loser. Some beginning has to be made in seeing them as part ofthis community, as well as its victims.
Questions of human rights are againclosely linked to the attitudes to which their experience led them.How do we see the militants today? In the case of the militantsaligned with the IPKF, one often sees them as tired and anxious young mencarrying guns and manning sentry points. One young man was dog tired chec-king cars on the road and hardly had the strength to check another. Whenthe next car came by he just gasped out, “Annai (big brother) if you are nota traitor you can go. “One night a motorcyclist was stopped at a sentry point. A young militant asked sulkily, ‘please sir, where are you going?” It was evident thathe had received a telling off from a superior on good public relations.In Mannar, a group of diners returned home late. A little later therewas a knock on the door. A militant identified himself as being from anearby camp and told them,”We are nervous of being attacked and when we saw you walking we felt rather anxious. Annai, please avoid walking around in the night”.In Vavuniya. a student passenger was conscripted when he went to aboutique at the bus station for a cup of tea. Seeing this. a teacher hireda taxi and rushed to the camp of the militant group. Going to the leader’s office he told him his complaint. The leader immediately ordered that all buses going in that direction be stopped and have the young man released. He then proceeded to inquire about old acquaintances and wished his regards to be conveyed.
Someone then brought in the” day’s papers to be censored.One Jaffna paper had quoted a BBC report. “BBC -that is pro-Tiger,” saidthe leader. “this paper is banned today.” He then went on reflectively. “Itis true that at one time we were concerned with human rights violations bythe Sri Lankan state. But times changed and we were pushed into a difficultsituation. We would still like to do political work amongst the people. Butour society does not value that. Only the gun is admired,and it aloneworks. Like Stalin. we had to make a decision. Yes, we decided that we hadto torture and kill to survive.”
Those who knew this leader in earliertimes remembered him as a pleasant and intelligent young man who leftschool without taking his A levels in order to do political work. He usedto go around villages in the Vavuniya district living frugally and drinkingplain tea. He had been arrested by the Sri Lankan army and sent to Boosa.After his release, he had at first been against going back to his group.This young man too had once been guided by high ideals.
One 14th April 1987 a large number of young recruits had been massed at a point as part of a plan to attack an IPKF camp. The plan went awry when the suicide bomber driving an explosive packed vehicle, was acciden-tally blown up a hundred yards from the camp. The young recruits in their early teens, scatterd in confusion, taking shelter in cowsheds and fields. People who encountered them found them clutching their guns, hungry and ill. Many had tooth defeciencies. One of them who was in agony pleaded at least a pair of pliers if a dentist could not be found. These were young boys who should have rightly been receiving maternal care. In their present environment, it was natural for them to hate everyone. They regarded them-selves as fated to die “and hated those who attended schools and universi-ties. They hated the people who may applaaud the killing of a soldier. but would not take the slightest risk to help them.
Indeed, there were white collar folk who said how nice it would have been had the attack succeeded. insensitive even to the civilian victims of the explosion. But for the generality of people in that area, the failure of the attack was a godsend. We have tried to give a picture of the” little known side of the militant phenomenon. Its victims are children from the more defenceless sections of society. Given such a picture of hopelessness and despondency, the current policy of conscription pursued with Indian connivance, if not master-minded by India, must be seriously questioned. In the past militant recruits had some feeling for the cause. But today. sons of the poor who had no means of fleeing, are being conscripted for a cause about which there is serious public misgiving. It is being done in a manner shamefully lacking in public accountability as though the young boys were being taken away to some zoo in the presence of anguished mothers.
Even in times when recruitment was voluntary and training was sponsored by India on Indian soil. India lost control of its policy and finis-
held up fighting a protracted war with one of its former protege groups. A number of militants too, even with their committment to a cause. developed a sense of envy and antipathy towards those leading ordinary civilian lives. What will then be the fate of the alienated young, being conscripted into a number of factions ultimately managed or mismanaged by India? We know that Indian officials treat these groups with ill-disguised contempt and .Just wish to use them as a temporary expedient. What does the future hold for them? Has not India once had its fingers burnt by such a policy? What does this decimation and alienation of its already diminished youth mean for the future of the Tamils? By no amount of subterfuge can India evade responsibility for this and pretend that the consequences are of someone else’s’making. Nor can anybody which calls itself the government of the North East avoid accountability on this matter.He had the gift of speech and a sporting disposition. To the junior boys he was a special friend, ever ready with an amusing tale at his fingertips~ giving them a few minutes of unforgettable enthrallment. The teachers found him obedient and ready to perform any task on behalf of the school with evident pleasure.
One morning he was taken out and killed in cold blood. For a number of his friends who came to his funeral. sadness was mixed with puzzlement. What had been the meaning of his life? They said he had been a friend~ but they had feared expressing themselves freely in his presence. They had felt the need for this reserve because of a feeling that everything he heard was being passed on.
It was said much later by one who knew him:” Had he come to me earlier, I would have given him an excellent character certificate without anyreserve. I discovered later that he had been leading a Jekyll and Hyde (double) existence. After this incident. the anonymous letters and posters which had been appearing around the school on an intimidatory note, ceased. Amongst his things was discovered notepaper bearing the letterhead used in the anonymous letters. It was very sad all the same.” The life of the boy was a sign of the times. He had his own ideals.formed in a vacuum. where his elders and the society at large abhorredtaking the slightest risk. The days when school meant work and play amidst a great deal of light camaraderie were gone. A heavy responsibility lies with the community and the teaching profession. If murder is the only way to deal with school children who formed certain ideals as a reaction to the situation around them, then thousands of our school children are being condemned to this tate.K. Muraleetharam, an Advanced Level student of Kokuvil Hindu Collegewas staying with his parents in Manipay. His father, a government servantworking at the Department of Education in Jaffna, was in charge of theCommunity Centre in Manipay. This local centre serves the community bysupplying newspapers and books of special interest to students
. Captain George attached to the IPKF camp situated along the ManipayRoad, near the junction had requested on a previous occasion when he wascasually talking to Muraleetharams’s father that the daily newspapers besent to the army camp first thing in the morning before being sent to thecommunity centre. The papers reached the Manipay army camp duly for thetirst few days and then for reasons unknown it was stopped.
About a week later on the 14th of May about 200 yards along theChaukanai Road, K. Muraleetharam was stopped and asked to get down from hisbicycle and was ordered to tear down the posters on a subway wall by theroadside. The poster had apparently been put up the previous night aspassersby had seen it in the morning. Then suddenly gunshots were heard andMuraleetharam’s father came rushing out in panic as almost every parent injaffna would do when on hearing gunshots find that their adolescent children are not at home at that time. On seeing the body of his son near theLTTE poster he demanded from the army personnel the reason for the killing.He was calmly told that his son was caught putting up the LTTE poster. In afrenzy he pulled down the poster which came out in shreds and cried, “Look!this is not wet. If it was put up now it would still be wet”. The patrolturned back to their camp in the deafening silence that followed withoutbothering their heads about a sane reply.In early March, with a few others he approached a house and said theywished to spend the night. He reportedly told the mistress not to worry andthat they would not shoot from the house and cause the inmates trouble. TheIPKF surrounded the house in the early hours of the morning. The youngleader and his companions did not resist. They swallowed cyanide and gaveup the ghost.
This experience made the aunt extremely concerned for all young menwho are driven to take up arms. They had a choice between dehumanization onone hand and mentor and spiritual agony on the other. This underlines theshame of state powers and assorted intellectuals becoming involved insubjecting young persons to such a fate.
Young men who die wielding arms are officially commemorated as martyrs, and speeches are made which distort the complexity of their livesinto a convenient straight-jacket. The misery, agony and questioning ofmany of those who so died, remains an unwritten tale, known only to thosewho were close to them.
On the 18th of June 1989, a funeral was taking place in Vadamaratchi. Theevent was in many ways characteristic of the region. A young lady washappily married and was the mother of a year old infant. The husband spentlittle on himself, but spent lavishly on his wife and child. The husbandrequested a small sum of money from that kept aside by the wife for him toseek employment abroad. When the wife refused, the husband threatened tosell their radio cassette. The lady, as she had done several times before,threatened to set fire to herself. She doused her dress with kerosene andplayfully lit a match at arm’s length. Being used to such behavior thehusband did not take it seriously. This time the fumes ignited and the ladywas badly burnt. The husband too was burnt trying to save his wife. Threedays later the lady died.
At the funeral the lady’s brother was inconsolable. An elderly femalerelative tried to console him with words of local wisdom: “Do not grieveover her. Playing with fire, was she? Did she think it was a toy? Don’t crybecause you could not finish the house you were building for her. You canfinish it for her young daughter”. The words appeared to have the oppositeeffect of consolation. Just then someone announced that three Pt. Pedroboys travelling to Colombo by train had been off loaded at Killinochchi bya pro-IPKF militant group the day before. There was a sharp change in theelderly female relative’s trend of thought. She was almost pleading: “Oh,my boy. I asked him to stay in Colombo. But he came to see me and wasreturning by that train. Where can I inquire about my son? To whom may Iappeal? Will they publish the names of those they took in the papers?
This was how the first reports of the shameful episode of conscriptiondescended on ordinary people. They should have been outraged. But they were just worried and anxious and could think little beyond protecting their own children. In the course of a liberation struggle they had been atomised and their sense of a collective identity had been destroyed.
On this same day, 17th June, a young boy, Gajendran Thiagarajah from Vavuniya, was returning by train to the school boarding at St. Johns’College, Jaffna. This train crossed the Colombo bound train at 2.30 p.m. atMankulam, which carried a number of youths conscripted at Killinochchi andescorted by gunmen. Gunmen who entered the northbound train ordered some ofthe youths. including Gajendran to get down onto the platform. At the sametime parents and relatives of the conscripted youths appeared, crying.screaming and pleading for the release of the boys. In an attempt todisperse them gunmen fired into the air. Gajendran and the other boysinstinctively fell on the platform. One bullet however, be~ieved to havebeen ricocheted. ,lodged itself in Gajendran’s chest. Others wanted himtaken to the nearest hospital. The gunmen, ignoring this, ordered the boysto get into the train and got the train to set off. Gajendran died beforethe train reached Killinochchi. Although the conduct of the gunmen was farfrom being that of representat-ives of the people, Gajendran’s death wasprobably an accident. Had the gunmen been doing something legitimate in theinterests of the people, they could have gone to the public, explained thatGajendran’s death was an accident and then assured them that steps werebeing taken to see that such things are not repeated. But they were unableto explain the conscription and kept quiet. Boys of school going age andtheir parents were driven to panic. It took very little to close down theschools. Notices appeared in the name of ‘the Students’ Committee’ demanding that schools should be re-opened only if the principals and teacherscould give an assurance guaranteeing the safety of students. Given thestate of fear amongst principals and teachers, and the political ineptitudeof the IPKF and its allies, no substantial assurance was forthcoming.
The IPKF had little understanding of its obligations as the guardianand keeper of the law. When confronted about conscription, it merely contented itself by saying that it had nothing to do with it. But the publicknew otherwise. Conscription was taking place at places like the Jaffnabazaar, where the IPKF was around. It was taking place next to IPKF camps.In a rural area like Murasumottai, conscripts were even taken to the IPKFcamp. For many people who were beginning to take an objective view of therealities, the conscription -process was a revelation of the contempt theIPKF had for the local population.
If conscription was in part a response to the success with which theLTTE tapped the discontent, particularly amongst rural children, resulting from the actions of the IPKF and its allies, it only made things worse. The process was cumulative. Conscription was both unlawful and was not being done for a purpose that people could see as legitimate. The result was a further erosion of the credibility of any group. Both sides were thrusting young Tamils under arms, using questionable means, not to protect the community. but to safeguard themselves against each other. This is often admitted privately.
What follows is a fairly typical instance of how ordinary people wereaffected by conscription. S. was a boy of 17 who was awaiting his O Levelresults, and was during this time apprenticed to a shop in Kondavil doingelectrical wiring work. He was travelling daily to work by bicycle from hishome in Urumpirai. The family was poor and his mother was sickly. Hisfather had held a good job as a corporation employee in Embilipitiya, buthad become a psychiatric patient after being assaulted during the July 1983race riots. During late June this year, S was picked up while going to work55on the KKS road and was deposited with a large number of conscripts at apro-IPKF militant camp in Oddumadam. The parents were in no position tolook for him. His Sinnamma {mother’s younger sister) who supervised hiseducation went from camp to camp and finally traced him. She went to S’sschool principal and obtained a letter stating that S. was in his school.She went back to the camp with the letter and was chased away. Afterhanging around in the vicinity for a long time, she managed to pass theletter to her nephew through a hole in the camp’s boundary fence.
Later though a Hindu she contacted a Christian clergyman in her neighbourhood who went to the camp and spoke on the boy’s behalf. S. was released after 3 days of detention. Over the weeks that followed pro-IPKF groups put out statements claiming that all those conscripted who attended schools had been released. Butt as more information came to light, what may have hap-pened to S. if not for the efforts of his aunt remains in question.
Of the many tragic cases that came to light, there was the case of a very young conscript in Trincomalee who was crying ceaselessly. He had been used to sleeping with his grandmother and now he was cast amidst so many miserable boys in a place where there was nothing like parental love. Many made jungle treks to the once dreaded Sinhalese country in the South, and then to Colombo, to evade conscription. Things were not easy in Colombo ej.ther, where rival groups were flexing their muscles. Several returned north. One youth who returned, reported being detained by the Sri Lankan police at Wattala and then paying Rs.5,OOO/- for his release. A group of youth detained in Vavuniya were released after their captors were made anxious by the possible effect on others of the saying of prayers and the singing of Christian songs by this group. A number of scenes where groups of youth were chased by captors in vehicles were described as reminiscent of “Hatari”, a John Wayne box office hit of the 60’s.
On 3rd September, as the Sunday morning’s worship was coming to an end at the Uduvil CSI Church a press gang had stationed itself outside the Churcht just in front of the IPKF camp. The Church doors were locked, and the youth were later smuggled out through the back. The IPKF had made no attempt to interfere.
In press statements, interviews and leaflets distributed at sentry points, the EPRLF appeared to be undecided about how it was going to face the issue. Over the BBC, Chief Minister Varadaraja Perumal dismissed con-scription as LTTE propaganda. One leaflet justified conscription as being necessary to defend the Tamils. On a number of instances, the press was told that all boys of school going age had been released. This was the position taken by the EPRLF’s co-ordinator in Jaffna.
On the morning of Sunday, 1lth September, a large number of parentsand relatives of conscripts assembled at the education office, Jaffna. Theauthorities received the names of over 140 school boys who had not beenreleased. Education authorities in the company of the political co-coordinator were driven to the Velanai EPRLF camp. There about 45 schoolboy con-scripts came one by one before the authorities and said that they wereremaining behind of their own accord to fight for the nation. Subsequentlyin a brief collective encounter they gave the authorities a hint of theirreal feelings, indicating that they should have acted earlier, before theywere sent for military training.
On their return to the premises of the education department, the authorities were besieged by indignant parents and relatives. A notablefeature was that they were all from the poorer and humbler sections of thissociety. An engineering foreman in an industrial plant was about the personof highest social standing present. Some of them had come from distantplaces early in the morning, had waited the whole day with little or norefreshment, and it being nightfall had no buses to return home. They couldnot accept the reasons given. They said: “These boys had shown no militaryinclinations in the past. They had been forcibly taken away from theirhomes, streets, farms and tutories. How can anyone accept these boys whomwe knew well had suddenly acquired a dedication for a particular militarycause?” The best the harassed authorities could do was to promise toarrange a meeting of the parents with the political co-ordinator. It was asignificant reversal of roles. In the past people would approach an MP(Member of Parliament) to sort out problems with government departments.Now people were approaching a government department to sort out a problemwith the people’s representatives.(Some of them approaching-militant campsdirectly had been turned away at gunpoint). The education authorities wereextremely anxious and unhappy about their new and potentially dangerousrole.
In order to find a way out it will not be helpful to look at the problem of conscription in isolation, although it is totally irresponsible and inexcuseable on the part of those who had official status as representatives of the people. It was also politically disastrous. But it is also linked to the deplorable way in which the Sri Lankan government handled its relations with them. The tardy and unsatisfactory process of devolution, proceeded by ministerial circulars, left the impression that after all that had happened, the government was not thinking seriously about the autonomy for the Tamils. Nor did the government seem to have realised, tht the best means of setting the scene for the departure of the IPKF, would have been to stay above the differences of Tamil militant factions, rather than exploit them for short term gains. The ability of the other party to use and magnify by its own actions the faults of its adversaries; without offering a political alternative which included a respect for human rights; and its success in recruiting children in their early teens; have far from helped the situation.
It was often found that the groups responsible for conscription were living in great fear of what the future held for them. The use the IPKF made of them had stunted their political imagination. Many of the leaders of these groups were in a state of mind where they were not amenable to reason on the matter of conscription. They could only imagine that the LTTE would come with the Sri Lankan army when the Indians left and kill them all. The fear spread down to the lower ranks. Some of the latter were sent out by their leaders with orders to bring in conscripts. Sometimes a person travelling between Jaffna and Colombo would be ordered out of the coach by immature young persons at gun point. If this person attempts to argue, he would be told,”Don’t tell us. Our orders are to bring someone. You come to the camp and tell our leader.”
The atmosphere was made more tense by a general belief by the IPKF and its allies, that the Sri Lankan forces were supplying the LTTE; and by the well known fact that the LTTE was establishing posts in Sinhalese areas near Sri Lankan police stations, along trunk roads leading out of the North and East.
It would appear that a substantial section of Tamil youth, instead of being trained to be productive in development, are being thrust under arms into rival groups, with the intrigues of state poweres playing no small part. The prospect of a bloodbath cannot be dismissed.
The Sri Lankan government’s calculations are motivated by the insurgency in the South, where the readiness to kill, torture and maim has far exceeded what the Sri Lankan forces practised during the Tamil insurgency. A thoughtful southerner remarked, that the solution to the whole depressing spectacle may be a process of ‘internal disarmament’. This carries an implication tht one cannot strictly divide the powers that operate into those that are legitimate and those that are not. Legitimacy implies accountability, which none of them are. In this perhaps the arrival of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) one of whose aims is to humanise the conflict, offers hope.
2. The parties to the conflict shall take all feasible measures in order that children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting them into their armed forces. In recruiting among those persons who have attained the age of fifteen years but who have not attained the age of eighteen years, the Parties to the conflict shall endeavour to give priority to those who are the oldest.[Top]
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