Tigers say no longer an 'armed group' but de facto state

Closing in on a nervous milestone

By Amantha Perera

It is once again the period of calmness. The north east remained relatively calm compared to the past month. Only two major incidents were reported. One in Jaffna and the other off the coast of Trincomalee.

On February 12 early evening, around five, the navy had detected a group of Tiger boats sailing south of Pulmodai, in the Puduwakkattu area that lies north of the Trincomalee bay.

The boats were sailing south hugging the coast when the detection was made. One boat was destroyed and another was captured. "Naval fast attack craft with the support of naval detachments along the coast launched an attack on the two boats.

"According to the naval sources one Sea Tiger boat was completely destroyed in the attack while the other was disabled making it possible for the navy to capture it," the Media Centre for National Security said.

Bodies of one male cadre and another of a female were recovered. The MCNS later released pictures of the captured arms and an assortment of other items. They included life jackets that had the logo of the British NGO Save the Children. The agency like several others in the past month later bemoaned in public that humanitarian aid had once again ended up being used as military ware.

Two days later the Tigers shelled an army detachment in Meesalai, located along the A9 highway south of Chavakachcheri. Sketchy details said that the shells had fallen during a conference at the camp, one high ranker had been killed along with eight others.

Air attacks and shell fire

On February 16 the Tigers said that areas on their side of the northern line of control had come under air attack and shell fire including multi-barrel attacks. They said that civilian areas had been under attack, however,  the military said that identified Tigers locations were the targets.

 Other than these incidents, the north east was clam. That is if continuing abductions and civilians being forced to live in fear could be called calm.

The truce that Ranil Wickremesinghe signed with Velupillai Pirapaharan will reach half a decade in less than 100 hours. The longevity however will not mean peace, instead the opposite.

The Jaffna grapevine is buzzing that the Tigers are to make a shift this week. Intelligence reports also indicate as much. Though LTTE military spokesperson Rasiah Illanthirayan denied that there was no policy message planned, the grapevine is abuzz.

In New York, on February 9, the much awaited Allan Rock Report was presented to the UN Security Council's Working Group on Children and Armed Conflict.  Rock stuck to the script. He was expected to push for sanctions against the Tigers and the Karuna Group while calling for the government to launch a transparent investigation into allegations of complicity on the part of the armed forces. 

The numbers quoted by Rock are mind boggling - in the last six years, there have been a possible 18,000 cases of underage recruitment. "Since 2001 up to January 31,  2007 a total of 6,006 children have been registered on UNICEF's underage recruitment database, as having been recruited by the LTTE.

"Of  that total, UNICEF's database shows that 1,710 remain in LTTE custody, of whom 707 are still below the age of 18. UNICEF believes that its figures reflect approximately one-third of total cases of LTTE recruitment.

Reneging on pledges

"Also according to UNICEF records, during the period from November 2005 to October 2006, 541 children were recruited by the LTTE.  Although the LTTE shared with UNICEF the names of 362 children it claimed to have 'released,' only 138 children were verified by UNICEF to have been separated from its rank," he said.

He blamed the Tigers for reneging on pledges made to then UN Special Representative Olara Otunu in 1998.

"In the period since the LTTE made the above commitments to me in mid-November, up to January 31, 2007, the UNICEF database discloses that 31 children have been released. Since my visit, the LTTE has provided the names of 131 children to UNICEF that it claims to have released since January 2006.

"UNICEF has verified the release of  70 of the children from the list and has updated its database accordingly. Eleven of the children were found by UNICEF to still be within the ranks of the LTTE, including the re-recruitment of three children. The location of the remaining 50 children has yet to be verified by UNICEF, due to the provision of insufficient address details of the children's homes.

 "Despite some progress on the release of children, UNICEF's database has registered the recruitment of 93 children since November 2006 to and including January 31, 2007.

"It is therefore clear that despite its commitments to release all children within its ranks and to stop the recruitment of all children below 18 years; the LTTE continues to recruit children, including through abduction. In the month of January 2007 alone, UNICEF reports that there were 19 cases of children recruited by the LTTE," he said.

The Tigers through their own Child Protection Authority, that has ironically come under criticism by agencies said that they were not about to meet the minimum age of  18  set out by Rock. In setting out its argument the Tigers also made the claim that it was no longer an 'armed organisation' but a 'de facto state.'

Coming eight days before the ceasefire touches half a decade, it indicated the trajectory of the Tiger thinking.

"LTTE takes the position that it is not covered by Article 4 of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of Child on 'Children Affected by Armed Conflict,' which states, 'Armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a state should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years.' On the other hand, Convention on the Rights of the Child permits the armed forces of the state to recruit those over the age of 15.

"LTTE provides extensive civil services in many areas of civilian life such as, health, education, child care, law-and-order, and environmental protection in which LTTE members take part. That only in LTTE areas in this island there are no children or women begging in the street attest to the extensive social welfare services provided by the LTTE. Many young persons entering the LTTE ranks are also trained as doctors, engineers, and in many other professions.

No longer 'an armed group'

"LTTE is therefore no longer an 'armed group' but is indeed a de facto-state. A functioning de facto-state like the LTTE is entitled to recruit those above the age of 17 but not send them to the battle front," the Tigers said.

"In all, members of 25 families described the circumstances in which their children, grandchildren, brothers or sisters were taken, and the efforts they have made to get them back. Although the vast majority of the family members I spoke to reported recent abductions by the Karuna faction, three of the families reported abductions by the LTTE," Rock said of the Karuna group, and repeated his allegations that security force members were involved in some instances.

"The fact that the Karuna faction has abducted so many children in government-controlled areas in the eastern districts of Sri Lanka raises the question why the government has not more effectively protected those children, investigated the complaints made by the children's families, and secured the release and return of the children from the Karuna faction camps that are located in areas under government control.

"Based on the facts and circumstances set out in this report, I have concluded that certain elements of the Sri Lankan security forces are complicit in the abduction of children by the Karuna faction, and that at least some elements of the security forces have facilitated and sometimes participated in those abductions," he said.

He said that President Mahinda Rajapakse too was surprised when he first made the allegations during an afternoon meeting on November 13 in Colombo. It was several hours after the meeting that Rock went public.

 Expressed surprise

"I met on Monday, November 13, 2006 with His Excellency Mahinda Rajapakse, President of Sri Lanka, and briefed him following my field trip. He expressed surprise at my conclusions involving complicity by some elements of the government security forces in Karuna faction abductions. He asked that I send him evidence upon which I relied in reaching my conclusions, and told me that when he received it, he would direct an investigation into whether such things were happening. He also told me that if the investigation established such complicity, he would hold those involved to account," he said.

The government has continuously sought credible evidence to back Rock's assertions. The report lists eight incidents that he said he used to arrive at his conclusions. However he has not given any concrete times, locations or names. Rock has said in the past, names needed to be held in confidentiality due to security concerns.

The government played down the report and said that it has made it clear that it was the Tigers who were the main culprit. "As a responsible member of the international community, the government has decided to adopt necessary measures to cause an independent and credible investigation into these allegations," Sri Lanka's permanent representative to the UN Prasad Kariyawasam told the Working Group according to the Foreign Ministry.

Minister Keheliya Rambukwella went as far as to say that Rock may have been mislead and that crimes carried out by the Tigers may have been palmed off over to the government side.

Drastic conclusions

The government had earlier also found holes in methods used by Rock to arrive at the drastic conclusions. The Peace Secretariat said that Rock only spent five days of his 10 day stay in the north east and most of interviewees could have been coaxed by the Tigers.

"The Special Representative of the UN Secretary  General, in his only visit to Sri Lanka last November, 2006, spent five days of his 10 day visit to Sri Lanka, in Ampara, Batticaloa, Kilinochchi and Jaffna, and during which time, conclusions were drawn that cast a slur on the government security forces, deviating from the long standing record of child recruitment by the LTTE. Not more than 25 people, some of whose families live in uncleared areas controlled by the LTTE, which operates in a culture of intimidation and violence, were interviewed.

"The Special Representative obtained a bird's eye view of the ground situation and then proceeded to write a report that would by implication hold the Government of Sri Lanka to share the blame for alleged child recruitment along with the LTTE and Karuna faction. In extending the blame for child abduction and recruitment to two other parties i.e. the government and Karuna, the report deflects attention from the LTTE which has recruited thousands of children," it said late last month when the US based Human Rights Watch released a report on underage recruitment in Sri Lanka

The International Independent Group of Eminent Persons that was set up to work in parallel with the presidential commission looking into human rights violations commenced work last week. Its success would be crucial for the government to get out of the human rights bind it finds itself in now.