Is there a future for Tamil children under Tigers?

by H.L.D.Mahindapala

Part 1

Unlike the Colombo-based NGOs, 'pussyfooting' around the issues of human rights violations of the Tamil Tigers, the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR) tend to be models of accuracy and fairness in presenting the grim realities faced by the Tamil people trapped in the north-south conflict.

One may disagree with their analyses and judgements flowing from their documentation but it is hard to fault their commitment to present the dehumanizing experiences faced by the Tamil population.

Each report documents, sometimes with eye-witness accounts, the relentless battering received by the Tamil civilians from all quarters. Each report reads like Dante's cantos descending, ring by ring, into the lower depths of hell.

Each report makes one believe that the plight of the Tamils has descended to the ninth ring - the last in circles of Dante's hell and it can't go down any further. But the next report belies that expectation.

Bestial brutality

The horrors recorded in the latest report, Information Bulletin No. 44 (March 13, 2007) amounts to bestial brutality. The evidence documented points to no redemption for the Tamils.

If anything, it compels me to believe that the Tamils will be dragged into lower depths than any imaginable level if the Tamil Tigers are allowed to get away any further with impunity.

The harrowing details present compelling evidence for the civilized world to put an end, once and for all, to the Tigers' crimes against Tamil children and their helpless parents.

My heart cringed in pain for the son who witnessed his father lying flat across the road in Nachchikkuda in December 2006 to prevent his abduction by the Tiger cadres. Did that stop the Tigers? No. They just ran over him spilling his guts on the road, says UTHR. On February 19, 2007, in Munram Piddy a Tamil mother, Annarathinam set fire to herself to prevent her son being re-abducted, after he had managed to escape the clutches of Tigers earlier.

"During January," says the UTHR report, "LTTE men raided homes in Munram Piddy and Alankulam during the night and took several girls, one of whom was an O. Level student."

Each report records the increasing levels of cruelty adopted by the Tiger torturers. The new evidence go beyond targeting the able-bodied youth by the Tigers to kidnapping and persecuting even the handicapped children. The unbearable agony of Tiger violence, scouring the homes of Tamils cowering in fear, is indicated in the following incidents recorded in II 4.3 of the report:

"Under the LTTE's insistence that every family must provide at least one combatant, whether blind or maimed, it picked up several handicapped recruits. On 9th December, Anbumaran of the LTTE abducted Nesathurai Kirisan (18) who was mentally unbalanced.

According to local sources, Kirisan was taken to Vaharai to dig bunkers and died in a Kfir bomber attack later that month. Nesan Komathan (14 or 15), a dumb boy conscripted by the LTTE has been noted above.

Sritharan (15 to 17) is a mentally depressed boy from Mudalaikkuda who was much of the time at the temple and used to do such things as chasing cows that came by. He was usually dishevelled and a figure of fun. Anbumaran of the LTTE conscripted him and put him to work in an LTTE farm under Dayamohan Master.

The plight of Raveendran

A 16-year-old mentally handicapped boy whom we call Raveendran was conscripted by the LTTE at Koppaveli. Raveendran is from Neelavanai, and because of his handicap his father kept Raveendran with him while herding cattle. People used to call Raveendran by such names as Singi and some hit him as they passed by.

The only knowledge one could reputedly elicit from him is the number of head of cattle herded by his father. The LTTE we learn took him to their interior Kudumbimalai base for training," says UTHR.

This goes beyond organized cruelty. This goes beyond war crimes. This goes beyond crimes against humanity. This goes into insane barbarism of demented political perverts feeding a killing machine run on the fantasies of desperate one-man regime that has no conscience or future.

The exploitation of handicapped children for Tiger barbarism cry out for international moral outrage. Why are the BBC reporters who sneak into Mugabe's territory not found in the Vanni where the Tigers run concentration camps and herd handicapped children to serve the masters of the LTTE?

UTHR adds: "In Mullaitivu, the LTTE came home to take a man's son. The man protested that they would have to shoot him first. The LTTE shot him in the legs and removed his son."

Consider also the "orange treatment" meted out to those children who try to escape when they are caught: "The punishment for conscripts caught escaping is to be hung upside down by the toes with a thorny stick from an orange tree placed under folded and tied knees and pressing against the thighs. The victim is then assaulted all over and buffeted about in the hanging position while he bleeds. Among the key torturers are Varathan himself, Nizam and Sri."

Grim reality

Does anyone care? Shouldn't Alan Rock and Radhika Coomaraswamy, the putative father and mother of all persecuted Sri Lankan children, do something more than warming their chairs at the UN when they are not globe-trotting or sipping their cocktails in the UN corridors? The grim reality is that there is no help for these Tamil children. And the UTHR report confirms this when it says: "In Adampan parents anxious to protect their children from conscription begged Sister Ruparani, of the Franciscan Order, to take them into the children's home she was in charge of.

She had also scolded LTTE men who came in their white van. She was hard pressed for resources to keep up with the demands on her. She went to an NGO meeting in Mannar town attended by leading government and non-government officials and pleaded for something to be done. She went back a disappointed woman."

To whom can the Tamil children turn to in their hour of need? They can?t turn to Ms. Coomaraswamy and Rock because they are politicking with the side-issue of alleged government complicity than the agonising reality of children and their parents treated as sub-humans by the Tigers.

The children can't turn to the international community because they, along with the manipulative Norwegians, have been a party to the failed Ceasefire Agreement which they foisted on the people of Sri Lanka without calculating the cost of it to the helpless children and their desperate parents.

And when the Tamil children are given the "orange treatment" the born-again Tony Blair, who is the father of several children, has the temerity to tell the Sri Lankan people to go back to the CFA which he would never have signed for England if English children and their parents were kept in some open prison, without exit passes, to do the dirty work of the Tiger camp commandants.

None of them is blind. Theirs is a case of refusing to see what is staring in their face. Their political blindness is inexcusable because it is tantamount to moral perversity.

The international community, the NGO/academic pundits and, most of all leading Tamil intellectuals and activists have adopted this blindness deliberately to either deny or escape the moral gravity and responsibility of having to do something concrete if they recognise the magnitude of the crimes committed against the Tamil children.

It is easy to blame the "Sinhala chauvinists", "the Sinhala-dominated governments", the Rajapaksas than grapple with the nitty-gritty of saving the Tamil children.

Common Mantra

Of course, the common mantra chanted by these amoral consortiums of do-nothing pundits is to pass the buck to the Sri Lanka government urging them to come up with a "political solution".

This political stance, which they think is their best moral posture, skirts round the three primary questions that are critical to this formula: 1) What happens to the children who have to wait for an acceptable "political solution" which has a long way to go may be years - to materialise in any concrete form? (2). Can a constitutional formula save the children from their Tamil predators when even the UN agreements and the CFA that came with international guarantees failed to save not only the children but the peace process as well? (3) Since it can be guaranteed that neither the children nor the peace process can be saved by the "political solution", whatever it's going to be, whom will they blame next and what action do they propose to take if their latest constitutional mantra, like all the other earlier peace and constitutional mantras proposed and implemented under their noses, fail?

Chanting this "political solution" mantra is a formula to ignore the cries of the Tamil children pleading to be saved from the Tamil Tigers. "Political solutions" and there have been many at least on paper will not materialise overnight to fulfill the aspirations of all parties.

In fact, any proposal for a "political solution" is bound to generate more violence than hopes of peace.

It can even be another additional cause for the Tamil Tigers to start their next round of violence with the NGOs, Western diplomats and even UTHR arguing that the proposed "political solution" does not go far enough to fulfill the aspirations of the Tamils.It can be foretold now that the chances of a "political solution" bringing the magic cure are mere pipe dreams.

According to the proponents of the magic "political solution", their objective is to tame, or weaken the Tigers by weaning the Tamil public away from the violent politics of the Tiger separatists.

That is the theory. But the Tamils have already broken away from the Tigers in significant segments (e.g. Karuna) and substantial numbers and the Tigers are still operative.

Manmunai Ferry incident

Besides, reading the UTHR report will make it clear that the hearts and the minds of the grassroot forces are turning away from the Tigers and that if they are given the freedom to vote with their feet they will move out of the grip of the Tamil Tigers with no compunction.

Of course, UTHR report argues that the violence of the Security Forces is forcing the Tamils to go back to the Tigers. But a closer reading of the report points to the fact that the Tamil parents and their children prefer to escape and move into government-controlled areas. They are trying every available means to escape. Here's one incident at the Manmunai Ferry:

"A father and mother were recently trying to get their son across to the government-controlled area by the Manmunai ferry from Kokkadichcholai.

The boy was a dark, well-built strapper of 13 years. They had boarded a vessel and were about to cross when the LTTE rushed in and tried to remove the boy. The boy jumped into the water and refused to come back. The LTTE pushed the vessel into the water, whacked the boy on the head with an oar, then shoved him into a vehicle and took him away."

This incident symbolises the common plight of the Tamils: whenever they try to escape they get whacked on the head. The misguided Tamils have landed in this hell-hole after following the divisive politics of their leaders from the early forties of the last century.

Today they are struggling to run away from the horrors of their politics and there is no one to help them. They are looking desperately for alternatives. Mark you, they are not looking for the grand political alternatives promised by their separatist leaders. They are not even looking for constitutional arrangements. They are looking for solutions that could ease their day-to-day existential problems.

They have lost faith in the over-ambitious Tamil politics and the juggernaut that came out of the womb of Jaffna jingoism. And why shouldn't they when they can't even marry without telling the Kavalthurai (Tiger Police)? Under the upper-caste fascism of the feudal and colonial ages the Tamils couldn't bury their dead ones without adhering to the funerary rites laid down by the vellahlas.

Now, under the lower-caste fascism, they can?t get married unless they adhere to the demands and the man-power needs of the one-man regime. Now in the Tiger-controlled areas they don’t marry to produce children. They marry to prevent the forcible recruitment of unmarried children by the Tigers.

This incredible Kafkesque nightmare would have been dismissed as propaganda if it was not documented in the UTHR report which says:

Among Varathan’s tasks was to watch over marriages, which many arranged early for their children as a means to evade conscription. One of the regulations people were enjoined to observe was to obtain clearance from the Kavalthurai before any wedding.

In September 2006, Nallathamby Sitha (40), a senior nurse at Mahiladitivu Hospital married a man of 39 from Kannankuda who had worked in the Middle East. The marriage ceremony was at 12.00 PM and acting on a tip off the Kavalthurai was there at 12.15 PM to arrest the couple. The bride was released immediately as a person of local importance. The bridegroom was released 3 days later.

An elder brother who protested was also taken and released. Karuna’s daughter (early 30s), a teacher in a UNICEF scheme, is the eldest among three daughters of tractor driver Karuna (50s) from the housing scheme in Munaikkadu West.

The daughter arranged to marry the man she loved on 25th January 2007. But they had not told the Kavalthurai. Close friends and relatives were invited home at 9.00 PM. On a tip-off, the Police who pounced on them at 4.00 PM on the wedding day and tied the hands of the daughter, her parents and two sisters and with a motorcycle escort marched them through Munaikkadu, Mahiladitivu, Mudalaikkuda and Kokkadichcholai. Finally, they were taken to Pattipalai.

They were sentenced to punishment in the Pannais or farms. The second girl, who had finished her education in Batticaloa, had come home only to celebrate a happy occasion. They had so far not been released. The bridegroom reportedly denied his intention of marriage and has since escaped to Batticaloa.

Narayanan of Mahiladitivu was murdered by Sri Lanka’s notorious STF in the infamous January 1987 prawn farm massacre. His son Kirupaharan married the eldest of a family of 5 girls, the second of whom was in the LTTE. The latter escaped and Kirupaharan hid his sister-in-law in a house in Munaikkadu.

The Kavalthurai suspected him and arrested him while he was eating at home. His mother and periyamma (mother’s elder sister) went to the Police Station and told Varathan that they wished to meet Kirupaharan.

Varathan pushed them onto the road and screamed that the next time they would be deemed thesaththrohis (traitors to the nation). He told them that they would release Kirupaharan only if they brought in his sister-in-law. The fugitive was surrendered to the Kavalthurai, but neither she nor Kirupaharan was released.

Kirupaharan was among those given the orange stick, upside down treatment described.

What bogus political theory of Jayadeva Uyangoda, the notorious anti-Sinhala-Buddhist pundit from Colombo University, can explain this strain of cruelty? Is he going to blame the paintings in Buddhist temple for these crimes too?

And will C. R. de Silva and T. Bartholomeusz, two other blinkered pundits from American academia, blame Sinhala-Buddhist fundamentalism for the following: Vaiththiyakkaddu Manickappody is a man of 83 years from Kokkadichcholai.

Recently some Kavalthuari men went to his house and wanted young drinking coconuts. When Manickappody told them to help themselves, the policemen ordered him to pluck them. Manickappody protested that he was stricken in years and they should not expect this of him.

The policemen threw him down into a drain and beat him and later took him to the Police station where he was again mistreated. Kannankuda Podiyar (squire), a good friend of Manickappody, had also contacts with the LTTE hierarchy. By cell phone he complained to Vanni police chief Nadesan about the treatment of his elderly friend. Varathan in turn detained him for 10 days for complaining, reported UTHR.

Whatever Velupillai Prabhakaran’s faults may be he has, with concrete examples from his killing fields, debunked the voodoo theories of academic kattadiyas like Uyangoda, H. L. Seneviratne, Michael Roberts, et al. Their theories that blamed the Sinhala-Buddhists at every turn have not helped to save the Tamils, or the peace process. Karuna too has blown to smithereens Uyangoda’s theory of dividing Sri Lanka into micro-mini states. Their last remaining theory is to blame the chauvinist Sinhala- Buddhists for not producing a political solution. But which political solution is going to appease the armed Tigers? And which formula is going to disarm them? Since there is no immediate possibility of disarming or appeasing the Tigers peace and the future of Tamils depend not on political solutions but in removing the Tigers from the political equation. This is the mission undertaken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa. His mission has gone beyond fighting terrorism. His mission now is to save the Tamils from the Tamils.

be continued next week