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OPEN LETTER to Dr. Radhika Coomarasway Under-Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict UN New York USAsoka Weerasinghe Ottawa, CanadaKings Grove Crescent . Ottawa . Ontario . K1J 6G1 . Canada May 1, 2008 OPEN LETTER to Dear Ms. Coomaraswamy: The Press Release OSRSG /PRO0804 brought to my notice that you were visiting the International Criminal Court in The Hague after the submission of an “amicus curiae” on Thomas Lubanga Dylio, who was arrested on March 17, 2006 in Kinhasa, for enlisting children under 15 as soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He, as we know it was a Congolese national leader and alleged founder and leader of the Union of Patriotes Congolaise (UPC) who was arrested and transferred to the International Criminal Court as part of judicial proceedings under the Rome Statute (July 1998) for allegedly committing war crimes: conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15-years and using them to participate actively in hostilities. Likewise the former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, was indicted by the special court of International Criminal Law for recruiting child soldiers. And so did the United Nations-backed International Crimes Court in Sierra Leone handed down landmark convictions against Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamarea and Santiogie Borbor Kanu for recruiting and using child soldiers. I am encouraged by your enthusiasm in bringing these human rights violators to justice according to International Criminal Law. But one criminal keeps slipping through your search-net for Human Rights violators of child abductors and recruiters for his Child Brigade for the past 10 years, with uncanny sleazy, slimy-ease which seems a strange phenomenon. The leader of the Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam –LTTE),Velupillai Prabhakaran, has got away unpunished for his role in forcible recruitment of child soldiers, some of them as young as six years that I am certain weigh slightly more than the weapons he or she is forced to carry. *Recalling the FACT* that the Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran selected Basheer Kaka, a Tamil Tiger from Trincomalee to establish a training base in the State of Pondicherry in India for recruits under 16, and in early 1984 the nucleus of the Tamil Tiger Baby Brigade was formed; *Recalling the FACT* that the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, which has been crowned as the most ruthless terrorist group in the world, first recruited children to form part of the Tamil Tiger fighting force as the Baby Brigade under Commander Justin, a Pondicherry trained Tamil Tiger when they took on the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1987; *Recalling the FACT* that by 1987 the Tamil Tiger child soldiers were integrated with adult units to fight beside them; *Recalling the FACT* that the Tamil Tiger child soldiers saw their first recorded action on November 22, 1990 when they attacked the Government’s Mankulum Army camp; *Recalling the FACT* that it was the battle for Elephant Pass on July 10, 1991, when an estimated 550 Tamil Tigers were killed and the majority were child soldiers; *Recalling the FACT* that the fiercest of all Tamil Tiger-fighting units was the Leopard Brigade, or Siruthai Puli which was exclusively of child soldiers whose unswerving loyalty to the Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was well noted. He says go and kill, and they go and kill; *Recalling the FACT* that it is the child soldier who is brainwashed and trained eventually to become a suicide bomber; *Recalling the FACT* that despite signed pledges given by the Tamil Tigers to United Nations Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Olara Otunuu in 1998, that they will stop recruiting children below the age of 18 years, and yet they have done it in the scores of hundreds each year ever since; *Recalling the FACT* that captured Tamil Tiger bunkers by the Armed Forces recovered stuffed toys and dolls, depicting that the soldiers were still kids playing with stuffed dolls, when they should really be playing with friends as pretend Mothers rocking a doll in their arms singing – */Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, and Down will come baby, bough cradle and all;/* *Recalling the FACT* that in March 2005 the Tamil Tigers launched an offensive to get the UNICEF expelled from Sri Lanka, following the strong criticism and condemnation from the United Nations Security Council for continued recruitment and use of child soldiers; *Recalling the FACT* that UNICEF had reported in 2005 of more than 4700 cases of recruitment and re-recruitment of children by the Tamil Tigers, by force, abducting children while on their way to school or during religious festivals; *Recalling the FACT* that UNICEF is also on record that the Tamil Tigers recruited 1,600 children from camps set up for people affected by the December 26, 2004, Tsunami; *Recalling the FACT*, the Tamil Tiger leaders promised your special Representative Allan Rock to stop recruiting child soldier by end of December 2006 and release all the child soldiers by then, and yet were recruiting with impunity child soldiers through abduction and intimidating the parents to hand over a child from each family; *Recalling the FACT* that on January 31, 2008, UNICEF reported 1,430 outstanding cases of Tamil Tiger child recruitment; *Recalling the FACT* that the Tamil Tigers had promised to disband its baby brigade pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1612, more than a decade ago but there has been little or no progress at all; It is vile; it is shameful, unpardonable and immoral that you have not taken the lead to indict the leader of the Tamil Tigers, Velupiullai Prabhakaran for these Human Rights war crimes as yet at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Why? Is it because he is one of you, a Tamil that you are letting him go that easily? Since you stand guilty of this deliberate inaction in the public court of my eyes, there is a need for an answer and I hope it is forthcoming. Sincerely,
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