Toronto Star: Tamil youth fall prey to Tiger rebel recruiters. ⇒
3 October 2005, early afternoon
The LTTE have been kidnapping children and forcing them to become child soldiers.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
“Significantly, most of the abuses over the past three years have been committed by Tamils against Tamils”
And the LTTE still has the nerve to call themselves “freedom fighters”.
what a joke.
by Dinu on October 3 2005, 3:44 pm #
That’s the most ridiculous line I’ve ever heard. So since the cease fire, most of the abuses against Tamils have been committed by Tamils?
I’m sure that most of the abuses against the Sinhalese have been committed by Sinhalese.
Excellent analysis and way to put it in context T.O. Star. That line points more to the success of the cease fire than anything else.
Not much to say about the actual story though, other than it’s sad and not surprising.
by haran on October 3 2005, 5:07 pm #
I don’t know if success is the word to use. If the cease fire prevents violence against Tamils by the Sri Lankan army, but allows for violence against Tamils by the LTTE than there is little net gain.
And Dinu, they can continue to call themselves freedom fighters because the vast majority of Tamil people support what the Tigers do and believe it will lead to ‘freedom’, whatever that entails. Whether the support justified or not is up to each person to decide I suppose.
I had written a much longer comment, but I think i’ll stop here.
by ramanan on October 3 2005, 6:33 pm #
Yeah, I agree, success wasn’t a good choice of words.
My point was that given the ceasefire with x and y, I expected “x on x” and “y on y” violence to now figure more prominantly than “x on y” violence.
It’s not like “x on x” or “y on y” violence didn’t exist during the active conflict. But it was relative to the war…
by haran on October 3 2005, 7:15 pm #
Isn’t it kind of odd to expect Tamil on Tamil violence during a Tamil-Sinhalese ceasefire? The reporter was refering specifically to significant human rights abuses, not just petty crime or bar fights. And isn’t three years of Tamil on Tamil human rights abuses a bit disturbing? That seems like a significant point.
by Mahindan on October 4 2005, 1:29 am #
Ram, you’re really going to tell me that the vast majority of tamils support the kidnapping of their own children on the way to religious festivals, and the subsequent beating and coercion of those children?
the ends never justify the means.
by Dinu on October 4 2005, 9:15 am #
That is exactly what I’m telling you. Look around the city. The bulk of the Tamils here wilfully ignore much of what the Tigers do, or are willing to accept it as part of the struggle.
And yeah, I also think the ends don’t justify the means, so you don’t need to tell me.
by ramanan on October 4 2005, 10:51 am #
Yeah I know I’m preaching to the choir there, didn’t mean it as some kind of personal lesson to you.
I just can’t believe that people are willing to look the other way on stuff like this. I mean, how do you support a group that attacks the very people they purport to represent? Just ridiculous.
by Dinu on October 4 2005, 1:44 pm #
Mahindan:
I think you’re responding to something I didn’t write. I didn’t say I expected T-on-T violence during the ceasefire. I said, I expected the existing T-on-T violence to figure more prominently. That’s a significant difference.
I objected to the original article’s questionable use of “stats” to bolster their thesis. Maybe you didn’t know those crimes were going on during the conflict. But now that the conflict is in this nether region of a ceasefire, yeah, those numbers are going to figure more prominently. Just like they do for S-on-S violence. It’s not inaccurate, but it’s misleading.
As for the content of your post, it’s been way more than 3 years of abuses.
Dinu:
People support groups like that all the time. What’s the rationale?
[edit. I don’t mean this to sound patronising, I’m sorry. I know you know this, but I’m building to something…I think] Well, it’s the lesser of two evils. But the people won’t put up with it forever. As the ceasefire stretches out there will be more resistance to go back to war from the majority of Tamils and Sinhalese. Which is problematic for the Tigers and the SL Army…but I digress, that’s a whole other issue.
Try looking at it this way: Why did this conflict start? Has the situation improved at all policy-wise? Constitutionally? All of the grievances that caused a mass exodus of people to leave SL before the fighting started are still valid today.
So does that make fighting justified?
I don’t think that it does.
But it’s really easy to throw stones from over here. It’s also easy to support the war from over here. We have that luxury of choice. A 20+ year active conflict doesn’t exist just because of one side. It has (had?) the support of the people because they believed life was worse under the policies of the SL govt.
by Haran on October 4 2005, 2:38 pm #
lol! It's quite easy to pick on the Tigers, why can’t Regg Cohn be a big boy and report proportionately to the GoSL offenses. If these a-holes gave a shit about Tamil children, where the bloodclot are the reports on: army occupation of schools, temples, civilian homes, the harassment of Tamil women, etc.
All in all, it seems like the SL diplomats (dipset! dipset!, that was for you Haran ;) are on top of their propaganda game. Me thinks this article, and the one a couple weeks back, is trying to justify a ban on the LTTE in Canada. :( sniff sniff. no more Cossentino? Say it ain’t so!
[ed: Damn it Parthi, use proper sentences man! Small edits to fix horrible punctuation. Heh.]
by Parthi on October 5 2005, 1:27 am #
Parthi, are you trying to argue that it’s OK for the LTTE to force children to join their ranks so long as the Sri Lankan government doesn’t change its ways? Or is it OK to kidnap children so long as the western media remains biased against the LTTE? Or did I miss the point of your comment entirely?
[ed. My point is that people should never get complacent. Otherwise you wake up one day to find the LTTE has turned in to FARC.]
by ramanan on October 5 2005, 4:44 pm #
There shouldn’t be any sort of moral equivalence argument but Parthi does make a valid point.
The SL government (and their army) essentially gets a pass often times. They’re percieved as a legitimate, democratically elected government. The western world confers an automatic degree of legitimacy on them as a result. There’s no further analysis done on what that democratically elected government and its army has done in the past, there aren’t any articles about the accusations they’re fuelling the Karuna faction, nothing about the shootings their soldiers carry out and so forth, they essentially get the benefit of the doubt – why?
The tigers, on the other hand, get the automatic blame, no matter what. Take the kadirgamar killing, there was no definitive proof that the tigers did it. Just government accusations. Anyone who has followed this conflict knows each side has countless ulterior motives, there are other parties who had an interest in him dying, but what happened? The EU took the unproven SL accusation as fact and banned LTTE people from travelling.
It’s a myopic view, fuelled by idiotic misconceptions about terrorism. State terrorism is JUST AS BAD as the terrorism of groups like the tigers. In fact it’s probably worse, it’s done under the auspices of elected groups, it violates a trust.
Obviously no one should excuse what the tigers are doing, and that day you mentioned, ram, could very well be in the past. But it’s also important that the government doesn’t continue to get the benefit of the doubt simply because people put state terrorism and the terrorism of a group like the tigers on different levels.
by Ananthan on October 5 2005, 7:23 pm #
here are two really good links, that i think you all will find very useful in understanding the Tamil question. the first covering the history of the Tamil question, the 2nd in view of the international community.
Doyen of FP, uncompromising on Tamil National question
Asymmetries in the peace process: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
enjoy.
by Parthi on October 6 2005, 4:38 am #
Thanks for the links Parthi. Still, you prove the point I am trying to make. The typical Tamil person is willing to silently accept anything the LTTE does. You’ve posted two comments here in a thread about the LTTE recruiting child soldiers and haven’t brought it up once. Does questioning the LTTE makes you an Uncle Tom? (I think I already know the answer to that.)
And Ananthan, it is indeed frustrating that the LTTE get such simplistic media coverage here in the West. This is a fact of life now in the comic book world Bush has created, where no distinction can exist between a freedom fighter and a terrorist, and where both parties are about as complex as Dr. Doom. Nevertheless, that doesn’t change the fact that when the struggle for equality for the people of Sri Lanka becomes more about PR than anything else, we have a problem.
I would expect the following response to this article: “I can’t believe they are recruiting our children”. However, the response deep down I know I will see is: “I can’t believe the Star wrote about the recruiting our children.” The outrage is misplaced.
An armed struggle will always be ugly. I don’t think there is a way around that. That doesn’t mean we need to ignore or hide the ugliness.
by ramanan on October 6 2005, 12:48 pm #
It is the same philosophy that the Bush administration pushes: criticism or even discussion of administration policies (torture, corruption, war mongering etc) is anti-American, an attack on American troops, a dishonour to soldiers and civilians who have died, ignores the crimes of the enemy, and in fact strengthens the hand of those who want to destroy the country.
It is a very effective argument. Maybe there is no room for accountability or debate or human rights in times of war. And maybe when an entire people are under seige, the war never ends. I think that’s pretty scary though.
Btw – That was a great interview with Navaratnam. Thanks for linking to it. And it is true that it is insane that everyone has jumped on the Kadirgamar accusations with no proof.
by Mahindan on October 6 2005, 2:20 pm #
Good news everybody, the Tigers have released 26 kids who volunteered to join the LTTE. No word yet on the kids who didn’t volunteer. (People like to jump on TamilNet for its bias, but I am always impressed they report all of the political killings taking place in Jaffna and the East. Unless they do so to intimidate, and not to inform, which would be less impressive I suppose.)
by ramanan on October 13 2005, 3:06 pm #
Parthi, your doyen of tamil struggle is bit too old man who had lost his mind, Read this article, he is bashing TNA to the hilt! Doyen Of FP, Demands Resignation Of TNA Members. (Also:Tamil MPs are irrelevant and they should resign for not acting against EU travel ban – V. Navaratnam)
LTTE and Singhala extremists are working for the same thing, the destruction of peace loving country!
WHY DID LTTE SUPPORTED MAHINDA/JVP/JHU IN THE LAST ELECTION??
They did a enforced boycott disenfrenchasing a huge tamil population thus preventing Ranil W from winning..
What LTTE want is war so SLA will start killing more people thus LTTE win Tamil support of who are victims of SLA terror.
Thats what happened 2 months back in Jaffna when LTTE attacked army in the name of “TAMIL PEOPLE’s FORCE”
LTTE are traitors of Tamils, i hope you all in Canada will realize it soon!
Thanks,
Maran
USA
[ed. Merged three comments together into one, and removed quoted text with links to the articles. You don't need to copy and paste entire articles here, people can follow the links you provided if they so wish. Please be mindful of how many comments you are writing.]
by Maran on March 12 2006, 7:26 am #