Realities of Canada’s efforts to prevent child conscription

Letter to PM Justin Trudeau

Right Honourable Prime Minister,

Canada’s efforts to prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is greatly appreciated. Your statement on the 12th of February 2021, reaffirming Canada’s commitment to draw attention to this inhumane practice with the longstanding intent of ending such conscription, along with nearly 100 UN Member States endorsing the Vancouver Principles on ‘Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers’, is most commendable.

The late Honourable Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka’s former distinguished Minister of Foreign Affairs, too devoted a great deal of time in campaigning for the same laudable objectives, and also canvassing international support towards the aims envisioned in the Vancouver Principles, and peace in Sri Lanka. He was unfortunately gunned down on August 12, 2005, by a sniper belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which group was designated as an international terrorist movement by the UNSC in September 2001, as he was emerging from the swimming pool at his residence in Colombo.

The LTTE was one such organization that abducted and conscripted children, several of whom were as young as 10 years, over a long period, that came to the attention of UNICEF that recorded a total in excess of 7634 such child soldiers. After a short period of training, they were unleashed on remote villages in the north and east of Sri Lanka settled by Sinhalese farming communities, who were set upon in the middle of the night to be hacked and shot to death while they slept, to make them combat ready. The last such village that was attacked was Gonagala in the Ampara district in the year 2000, where 62 persons were put to death, with the lucky ones escaping to the jungle to be rescued later by Sri Lanka’s security forces. Despite the LTTE signing a pledge with UNICEF’s Special Rapporteur, Olara Otunnu in 1998, and thereafter making repeated promises to the UN officials, they continued to conscript underage children to their fighting forces. They would abduct them on their way to school or homeward bound children after school hours, and by instilling fear and making threats to the parents. Subsequently, they forced each family to release a child for their separatist war effort.

These child soldiers were given combat training and were equipped with an AK47 automatic weapon and a cyanide capsule strung around their neck, to be bitten into in the event of their being captured. They were used as stormtroopers in the LTTE’s unceasing waves military strategy, adopted in battles against the Sri Lanka Army, with many of them becoming casualties in combat. Their bodies were laid to rest in the special cemeteries set up to bury the LTTE’s martyrs, with no mention of their dates of birth, and only the date of death being recorded on the gravestones in order to hide the fact that they had conscripted under age children below 15 years, which was a war crime. Some of the children so conscripted were brainwashed to become suicide bombers, with the LTTE holding the world record, having exploded around 377 human bombs.

Those responsible for the disruption of schooling and family living and care for Tamil children in Sri Lanka, are present in Canada as well, and raised funds for the terrorist war engaged in by the LTTE through extortion of Tamil expats and Tamil owned businesses, drug and human smuggling, passport fraud, and numerous other illicit activities. Following the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, and ending of the three- decade long separatist terrorist war in Sri Lanka, these LTTE activists in Canada, have donned the cloak of human rights activists to spread their fabricated stories, doctored videos, and unsubstantiated wild allegations of IHL violations and war crimes, supposed to have been committed by the Sri Lankan security forces during the last phase of the armed conflict January 1 to May 18, 2009. It is a shame that these allegations have been swallowed by the powerful countries in the west that continue to harass Sri Lanka at the UNHCR and other fora, based on these unproven alleged violations, citing Ban ki-Moon’s one sided three- member panel report headed by Marzuki Darussman, which has been locked away for 20 years till the year 2031.

Unlike these bogus allegations emanating from born again pro-LTTE Human Rights activists, Sri Lanka rescued about 300,000 Tamil civilians held by the LTTE as a human shield, in the final battleground at Mullivaikkal on the northeast coast; sheltered them in welfare camps in Vavuniya where they were fed, provided with education, vocational training, psychiatric help, etc., until the land area of almost 1,000 sq. km was cleared of landmines, houses and infrastructure restored, and made safe for resettlement in their former villages. Among those who surrendered were nearly 12,600 former LTTE fighters, including the remaining 594 child soldiers who were rehabilitated with new livelihood skills and released to their families and society, where they could be gainfully employed under the restorative justice principles adopted in their case.

A new 12-minute video documentary has been produced under the title ‘Truth Behind Dare’ using video clips provided by the rehabilitated ex-LTTE fighters which shows the military training given to the children who were abducted and conscripted as soldiers for armed warfare, most of whom perished in battle. Some scenes show parents handing over their children to the LTTE terror organization as part of their propaganda to claim willingness of the civilian population to give up their children for the separatist cause; which obviously fails as the parents faces shows the immense pain they suffer at the time, as the alternative is violence being directed at them and their children still risking being abducted on their way to or from school.

Other scenes show Adele Balasingham, the Australian nurse who was married to the LTTE’s ideologist, in military attire, participating in a Passing Out Parade of women cadres most likely trained by her, who were being garlanded with the signature ‘Cyanide Necklace’ for committing suicide in the event of capture. Adele Balasingham today resides freely in the UK, probably supported with the tainted funds raised by the LTTE, with no questions asked about her being part of a designated international terrorist movement.

The LINK to this revealing video is given here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpz8Cl_-YpM&feature=youtu.be> .

Please watch the video to learn the facts behind the rigged version that is propagated by the pro-LTTE organizations, which have been sold to the western powers who seek to punish Sri Lanka for geopolitical reasons best known to them.

MAHINDA GUNASEKERA

Toronto, Canada