UNITED NATIONS BODY SAYS TMVP
HAS RELEASED CHILD SOLDIERS AND NO LONGER CARRYING GUNS IN PUBLIC
By Walter Jayawardhana
The United nations office for the Cordination of Humanitarian Affairs
in a statement issued from Batticaloa , a day before the elections said
the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP) the political party which
is transforming itself from an armed group to a party contesting elections
released 39 child soldiers to a government led rehabilitation program
and restricted its armed recruits to interior forests in the Eastern
Province and they no longer travel public carrying guns in view of the
elections.
The UN body also reported that Pillayan, the TMVP leader has pledged
publicly that would not allow any child recruitment to the group. The
following is the UN report:
“The Karuna faction, the Tamil Tiger breakaway group, which has
been transforming itself from an armed military group into a political
party, released 39 underage recruits in April 2008.
”The group, officially known as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pullikal
(TMVP), released 28 children on 24 April after 11 were let go on 11
April.
”The TMVP was formed by the former eastern military commander
of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Vinayagamurthi Muralitharan,
alias Karuna, after he broke away from the Tigers in April 2004. It
now controls all nine local governing divisions in its native Batticaloa
District in eastern Sri Lanka following a clean sweep in elections on
10 March, and is contesting the Eastern Provincial Council election
on 10 May as a coalition partner of the ruling United People’s
Freedom Alliance.
”The TMVP is now led by Karuna’s chief lieutenant Sivasuntharai
Chandrakanthan, alias Pillayan, the party’s candidate for the chief
minister of the province, who has taken pains to rehabilitate the party's
image.
”In addition to the release of children into a government-led
rehabilitation programme supported by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
it has restricted its armed members to camps in the interior forests
in the eastern province or inside its compounds in more populated areas
and they no longer travel in public carrying arms.
”The TMVP told IRIN it had voluntarily decided to release the
children, who it said had sought protection. “We never gave these
children armed training; they came to us for protection,” TMVP
spokesperson Azad Moulana told IRIN. “There were 48 children under
the age of 16 with us and we have released 39 so far. We will release
the rest before the [10 May] election,” he said.
”However, according to a UNICEF database, 76 recruits younger
than 18 are still with the TMVP, down from 131 at end-March.
”UNICEF has intensified its monitoring mechanism recently, according
to the agency’s officials in Colombo. UNICEF officials personally
visited and interviewed families of child recruits remaining with the
TMVP to verify each case.
“We absolutely verified every single case in the books by visiting
the families,” Gordon Weiss, UNICEF chief of communications in
Sri Lanka, said.
“A year back there was a lot of fighting [in the east] and families
reported their children being forcibly recruited,” Weiss said.
“Now there is no fighting and our hope is that there is a genuine
change in policy by the TMVP on child recruitment.”
”Chandrakanthan had told campaign meetings the party would not
engage in underage recruitment.
”The Sri Lankan government welcomed the releases, the largest
by the group, as a clear sign of the return of the rule of law to the
east. “The government views the release of these children as further
signs of the strengthening of democracy and return to conditions of
normality in areas of the Eastern Province,” the Ministry of Human
Rights and Disaster Management stated.
“The government, as part of its zero-tolerance policy on the recruitment
of children for use in armed conflict, has taken steps to secure the
release and initiate programmes of rehabilitation for children caught
up in armed conflict.”
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