January 25, 2007	Thursday	Muharram 05, 1428

COLOMBO: A leading human rights group on Wednesday slammed Sri Lanka for conscripting hundreds of child soldiers to fight against Tamil rebels, saying that the police had turned a blind eye to the practice for years.

The New-York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the government of “hypocrisy”, saying in a 100-page report that Colombo was guilty of the same practice for which it had denounced the Tamil Tigers.

“After years of condemning child recruitment by the Tamil Tigers, the (the Sri Lankan) government is now complicit in the same crimes,” said HRW child rights advocate Jo Becker in a statement.

The rights group confirmed a United Nations charge in November that Sri Lankan forces were collaborating with a breakaway faction of the Tamil Tigers known as the “Karuna group” in rounding up youngsters to be enlisted.

“The government’s collusion on child abductions by the Karuna group highlights its hypocrisy,” Becker said.

The HRW said its charges were backed with case studies, maps and photographs showing how government forces helped the Karuna faction recruit boys as combatants.

“It (the evidence) shows how Karuna cadres operate with impunity in government-controlled areas, abducting boys and young men, training them in camps, and deploying them for combat,” the report said.

The report said the government was fully aware of the abductions, but allowed them to happen because it was eager for an ally against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

The LTTE’s de facto deputy, V. Muralitharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, led a split in March 2004 and has since allied himself with government forces in his stronghold of the island’s east.

The latest HRW report follows allegations by senior UN official Allan Rock, who first drew attention to Colombo’s alleged complicity in child recruitment.

The HRW said Karuna loyalists forcibly took away children from their homes, temples, play grounds, public roads, and even from a wedding reception.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) has documented over 200 cases of child recruitment by the Karuna group.

But the real number is certainly much higher due to under-reporting, Unicef has said.

The HRW also slammed Sri Lanka’s police for indifference to complaints of child recruitment.

In some cases, police reportedly refused to register parents’ complaints, the HRW said, adding that in other cases, the police accepted the allegation but failed to undertake a proper investigation.

Police are not known to have secured the release of a single child, the report said.

Both Karuna and the Sri Lankan government have denied that they were involved in enlisting underage combatants.

The Karuna group late last year promised the UN to issue policy statements banning child recruitment, to release any child found among cadres and to provide Unicef with access to their camps, the HRW noted.

There is no sign yet that these commitments are being honoured, the report said, adding that the Karuna group continued to abduct boys and young men in November and December 2006.

Responding to Rock’s findings, Sri Lanka promised an investigation, but also used state machinery and military officials to question his credibility and motives.

The LTTE has a long history of abducting children into its forces, to use them as infantry soldiers, intelligence officers, medics, and even suicide bombers, according to the HRW.

A UN Security Council working group on children and armed conflict is to meet next month to consider violations against children by all parties to Sri Lanka’s conflict which has claimed more than 60,000 lives since 1972.—AFP