THE distinction between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is getting thinner with every passing day. However, what if someone killed as a terrorist or a potential killer does not even get the benefit of being owned up as a freedom fighter by anyone? This is precisely the irony in the case of the 61 young adult girls killed in a bombing raid by the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) in the LTTE-controlled north on August 14.
The only undisputed fact that has emerged so far is that at some time the bombed compound was used by the Tamil Tigers as a children's home. The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has admitted that 20 bombs rained down on a compound in Vallipulam, between Thevipuram and Puthukudiyiruppu on the Paranthan-Mullaitivu road, before 7 a.m. on August 14. The government version is that it was the LTTE's transit military camp which prepared its cadre for deployment in the battlefields of the north and east as well as in the Jaffna peninsula. In other words, the bombing was a defensive strike.
Undoubtedly, the government was provoked into a bloody fight by the LTTE a week after the latter chose to block a waterway on July 26. With the spread of the war now to the Jaffna peninsula, the whole war zone is out of bounds for the rest of the world. Accounts of the happenings on the ground emanate from either government or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sources. This has been the case with the compound bombing as well.
The presence of United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) workers in the particular district of the bombed compound is a minor consolation. The workers of the U.N. body inspected the bombed compound. The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), despite being reduced to near irrelevance, also managed to send across a team for an independent assessment of the compound and the justification or otherwise of the government action.
The tentative conclusions put out by both the SLMM and UNICEF fly in the face of the government assertions. They concurred with the LTTE that these girls were not undergoing military training and further saw no evidence of any military facilities at the compound. Independent accounts do suggest that the premises were used by the LTTE, but not quite as a training camp. The girls were from several schools around Killinochchi and Mullaitivu.
The government appeared unperturbed by the preliminary `findings' of the UNICEF and the SLMM. President Mahinda Rajapakse's Defence spokesman, Minister Keheliya Rambukwelle, insisted that it was an LTTE transit camp identified by long-term observation. He argued that once a child is under training for military use, it could not be treated as a normal child. "At a time like this we cannot look at their age, but instead at what they were aiming to do," he told the media.
Rambukwelle even cited UNICEF's statement a few months ago that the LTTE had recruited more than 1,000 children, almost as a justification for the bombing. He said: "UNICEF can't later tell us that they are children and not to attack them." The only thing the military contested was the LTTE figure of 61 killed and announced that the actual number killed ranged from 200 to 300.
The University Teachers for Human Rights - Jaffna (UNTHR-J) has highlighted a few important elements from the case. It said in a report on the latest situation: "This attitude is to do with the government dispensing with a political approach and being cornered into a non-cerebral one that shows it in the worst possible light. The LTTE's use of children is one crime that has received the most publicity in the South and Sri Lankan delegates have many times raised it in international fora. At home, however, precious little was done for these children. The government has lost all credibility on the matter after it allowed or encouraged Karuna to conscript children and take them through its check points for training at Theevuchchenai near Welikanda."
"Rambukwelle claims that the government called upon the children under arms to surrender and enjoy amnesty. For one thing, surrender is impossible for most children under arms. The Bindunuwewa prison massacre and the impunity enjoyed by those who executed it do not give these children a credible option. Witnesses present at the Supreme Court hearing heard comments from the Bench disturbingly close to Rambukwelle's reasoning. There are more compelling concerns. For LTTE supporters, the bombing of the girls at Vallipulam is a stick to beat the government with. They did not bat an eyelid or shed a tear when the LTTE sent children charging against entrenched army positions. It slaughtered 500 children at Elephant Pass in July 1991 and above 200 at Pooneryn in November 1993. To the government and Sinhalese extremists, statistics on LTTE child soldiers are a humanitarian issue to be used only to disguise their political bankruptcy. Both sides miss out on the real human tragedy of child soldiers."
One did not hear anyone accusing the UTHR-J of taking sides.
B. Muralidhar ReddyCOMMents
COMMents
SHARE