Allan Rock Report targets
sanctions against LTTE
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ontario, Canada
February 13, 2007
Ambassador Allan Rock.
UNSG
Special Representative on Children and Armed Conflict
New York
US
Dear Ambassador Allan Rock:
It was with great interest that I read the Asian Tribune news item
from New York (10 February 2007), Sri Lanka: Ambassador Allan Rock
report urges imposition of targeted sanctions against LTTE. It published
the full report of yours.
This sounds harsh, however, after reading your report my immediate
reaction was – “No, I will not forgive this man”.
You obviously sounded like a born-again Child-Human Rights crusader
after a decade of political-debauchery as a Canadian Liberal Party
politician, at worst being the Minister of Justice and Attorney General,
taking away the right to life of many innocent Sri Lankan infants
and children at the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE aka Tamil Tigers), that you and your Liberal Party supported.
You now seem to be concerned about abduction of children to be trained
as soldiers by the two Tamil terrorist groups in Sri Lanka. However,
I hasten to add that the Karuna group has vowed that it has given
up terrorism and aspiring to be democrats believing in the power of
the ballot rather than the bullet to achieve the groups’ political
goals. Perhaps, I ought to commend on your conversion, but I will
wait to be convinced that you are indeed a sincere Child-Human Rights
crusader within the Sri Lankan context.
For over a decade you let the Tamil Tigers collect funds in Canada
to buy weapons, for them to crawl in the early morning dark, to enter
village shacks where innocent Sinhalese children and infants huddled
against their mothers breasts, and shot them dead at point blank range.
Killing them weren’t good enough for these tribal terrorists;
they had to disembowel these children with machetes. Most of these
attacks were conducted by the Tamil Tiger Baby Brigade, boys and girls.
Radhika Coomaraswamy should be able to provide you with print-images
of these massacres of innocent Sinhalese children. Demand that she
provides these images for you to witness on the way for you to cleanse
your conscience as an expression of penitence.
Here are some comments of survivors where children were killed by
the LTTE.
May 24, 1986 : Siripura – In the worst incident rebels swept
through Siripura village late on the night killing four women, six
men and 10 children aged from nine months to 14 years.
Among the dead were a couple who had been married for nine days
and a nine month old infant an eye witness said. A mother who was
carrying her baby was shot at. Her baby died on the spot and the mother
suffered chest injuries.”
August 9, 1990: Siyambalagaskada – “The next night they
literally swooped on three villages and mercilessly massacred 124
terrified villagers while they begged for mercy. Among the victims
of the gory genocide were 31 little children.”
November 2, 1995: Malakalugolla, Siyambalanduwa - Terrorists entered
the village and hacked to death 5 children, aged from 1 ½ years
to 15 years.”
April 24, 2006: Pushpakumari, a young mother was hacked to death
while she was breastfeeding her infant at home in Senuwara in Trincomalee.
Ambassador, these were the tribal brutes that you and your Liberal
caucus refused to ban for 13 long years and provided a cloak of respectability
which gave them an added incentive to kill children with impunity.
They were all the same God’s children, no different from the
children that you and Radhika Coomaraswamy are trying to extricate
from the claws of the Tamil Tigers and the Karuna Group.
Unfortunately, your proposals to the UN Working Group, as I see it,
are inadequate lacking the bite for a fool-proof remedy. There are
several links that are missing and you have let the Tamil Tigers get
away scot-free one more time unless they are reined in to submission
and accept civilized humanitarian norms.
Here are my problems.
a. It is a known fact that the Government of Norway has funded the
LTTE through the years, thus providing them oxygen to survive. That
sustenance has and will provide the LTTE with the fiscal capacity
to add more cadres to their army. Invariably, since 40 per cent of
the LTTE army is comprised of children and as they have to replenish
their fallen soldiers, the abduction and recruiting of child soldiers
will go on. Unfortunately for these child soldiers, over a million
Tamil adults who could have spared these unfortunate children have
run away to safety to foreign lands as refugees, thus exposing and
making the Tamil children who didn’t have enough rupees to buy
a $25,000 a fraudulent travel package with a guarantee to enter a
foreign country, nor the cunning to land on a foreign shore and claim
that they are refugees, vulnerable to be abducted and forced to take
up arms.
The tentative report of January 2007 prepared by Norwegians Against
Terrorism (NAT), said that in 2005 the LTTE front organization TRO
received 15 million NOK (US$2.3 million). The LTTE “peace secretariat”
received US$ 900,000. It also reported that 70-90% of the LTTE funds
comes from their international fundraising and criminal activities.
b. Tom Whipple reported in The Times of February 5, 2007, that “Sri
Lankan Tamils living in Britain say that they are being intimidated
into handing over “donations”: of up to Sterling pounds
50,000 to support rebel operations in their homeland.”
c. Surya Bhattachariya of Toronto Star reported on December 6, 2006:
“Other than listing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam as a
terrorist organization, the Canadian government has done little to
curb fundraising by the banned group in Canada, Human Rights Watch
says.”
d. Dr. Peter Leitner, President of the Counter Terrorism Centre has
identified Tamil Nadu, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Cambodia, Thailand,
Burma and Croatia as countries that have provided arms to the LTTE
to be used by its Baby Brigade during battle.
Answer: Come down heavy on countries that fund the Tamil Tigers as
well as let them collect funds surreptitiously, and the countries
that let the LTTE procure weapons for its war with the Sri Lankan
government armed forces. Every such country is guilty of the crime
to let child soldiers wear fatigues and shoulder weapons at battle
bought from their funds. Our Canada is guilty of this misdemeanor
too.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague which was set
up as the first permanent global war crimes court in 2002 and now
supported by 104 nations is ready to prosecute war lords and dictators
who conscript Children as Child Soldiers. Make use of it.
On February 2006 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Thomas Lubanga
Dyilo, the leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots for war crimes.
His war crime was “conscripting and enlisting children under
the age of 15 years.”
“Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is criminally responsible…for war
crimes consisting of enlisting and conscripting children under the
age of 15 years and causing them to participate actively in hostilities,”
Judge Claude Jorda told the court.
How come you nor Radhika Coomaraswamy didn’t pin Velupillai.
Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, and Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan
(alias Colonel Karuna), leader of the Karuna Group whom you alleged
to be involved in similar war crimes of abducting and conscripting
children to be soldiers? They are criminally responsible for war crimes
and should be charged in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
There shouldn’t be any ifs or buts.
Thirteen people from all warring factions in Sierra Leone have been
indicted by the Special Court since November 2003, including former
President of Liberia, Charles Taylor. Charges against the indictees
include conscription of children under the age of 15 into an armed
force.
Charles Taylor will be tried for his war crimes in the International
Criminal Court in The Hague this April. If his crimes were conscripting
children then how come Radhika Coomaraswamy, the Special Representative
of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict and you,
her Special Adviser on Sri Lanka, let Prabhakaran hole himself in
a Wanni bunker and let his troops continue abducting and conscripting
children for his armed force for two decades? This is where your report
lacked teeth.
Answer: Your recommendations to the Security Council Working Group
should have included a deadline for the LTTE and the Karuna Group
to release all child soldiers and allow UNICEF access to their camps
for a final sweep. Failing, you should recommend that both leaders
of these groups be charged by the International Criminal Court in
The Hague for their criminality in war crimes for abducting and conscripting
children under the age of 18 and causing them to participate actively
in their separatist, terrorist war in Sri Lanka.
I truly believe that your report needs an addendum and hope your
mandate does provide you a window to do just that.
I suggest the following clauses for your consideration under the
subtitle Recommendations:
69. (e) I respectfully recommend that the Working Group propose to
the Security Council that it should
(i) Call upon foreign countries such as Norway who fund the LTTE’s
Eelam cause, and the countries such as Canada, US, Australia and the
UK, to curb the fund raising activities by the Tamil Diaspora to fill
the LTTE war chest of this banned terrorist group, which directly
affects the recruitment of child soldiers.
I propose a time frame of six months to curb such activities, and
reprimand those countries, as you see fit, that do not comply with
this request.
(ii) In virtue of the UNICEF findings that the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam have between 2001 and January 21, 2007 recruited 6,006
children for their army, and my finding about the Karuna Group, and
in virtue of the fact that the LTTE has broken their commitment to
Olara Otunnu, the former UN Ambassador for Children and Armed Conflict;
and failing to keep their promise to me that they would release all
child soldiers by January 31 2007, I recommend that the Working Group
propose to the Security Council that we give LTTE and the Karuna Group
a deadline of six months to release all children from their army camps
and stop recruiting children for their armed forces. Failing that
Velupillai Prabhakara, the leader of the LTTE and Karuna the leader
of the Karuna Group should be charged by the International Criminal
Court in The Hague for breaching the Security Council Resolution 1612
and the 2003 Action Plan for War-affected Children in Sri Lanka, for
their criminality in war crimes.
All you foreign diplomats and special advisors have played your parts
in Prabhakaran’s puppet theatre, in Killinochchi doing your little
hosannas and ho-hum dances according to the LTTE tribal tom-tom war
beats.
In my eyes you all have looked a bunch of naïve fools, every
visit after visit to Kilinochchi. Let us see some gumption and teeth
in your report to the UN Working Group to save these Tamil child soldiers.
Yours sincerely,
Asoka Weerasinghe
Ontario, Canada
