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Child rights organizations urge an end to use of child soldiers |
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May 13, 2000
NEW DELHI, MAY 12 (AP) - After a fierce battle between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil rebels last year, 49 child soldiers were found among the 140 rebel dead. Thirty-two of them were girls 11-15 years old.
Activists against child soldiers said Friday both the government and the rebels are recruiting children as Sri Lanka's 17-year civil war goes into a decisive phase.
Rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam routinely visit schools and shut them down for recruitment drives. An unspoken rule says every family must offer one child to the rebels, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers said Friday.
The government also defies its own law against enrolling anyone under 18 in the army, the Coalition said.
After the battle for Oddusudan in Oct. 1999, the Sri Lankan military handed the bodies of the children to the International Committee of the Red who declared the use of minors in combat as a war crime.
"They purport to be defending their homeland. But by using children they are destroying the very fabric of the society they are trying to build," said Rory Mungoven, organizer of the Coalition.
Sri Lanka is among 30 countries where more than 300,000 children under the age of 18 are currently being used in conflicts, said Mungoven.
Africa has an estimated 120,000 minor combatants, and Asia has 75,000 child soldiers.
Henrik Haggstrom, who has worked for more than 10 years with militia's employing children, said armed groups testify that children make some of the best soldiers.
Modern lightweight weapons enable children as young as 10 to be efficient killers in combat. They can carry bombs and infiltrate enemy lines. They can undertake high risk jobs like demining. They have a tactical advantage too as adult soldiers are reluctant to shoot children. And they get paid less than adults.
Children also perform guard duty, are used for sexual services and for cleaning and sweeping, Haggstrom.
In Afghanistan and Pakistan, students are recruited from religious schools and trained to fight a "holy war" in Kashmir.
In India, armed militias also are reported to recruit children to fight in Kashmir, among secessionists in the northeast, and by Maoist rebels in south-central India.
Burma is the single largest user of child soldiers.
"In some places children are being recruited at gunpoint, but often the reasons are poverty, lack of opportunities, propaganda and human rights abuses at the hands of the state," said Haggstrom, of the Swedish chapter of Save the Children.
A country-by-country report will be at the first Asian conference on child soldiers beginning Monday in Katmandu, Nepal, where the Coalition will seek support for a global ban on child soldiers, said Mungoven.
The use of children as weapons of war should be put on the same moral and legal footing as the use of chemical and biological weapons," said Haggstrom.
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