LTTE child soldiers will be treated as victims: Sri Lanka

By Ravi Matah

COLOMBO – A senior U.N. representative has met with former Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam terror group child soldiers and asked the Sri Lankan government to keep them in rehabilitation only as long as necessary.

UN Special Envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, Patrick Cammaert, said he  had been reassured by Sri Lanka’s Attorney General that the children formerly associated with the LTTE were considered victims and that they would not be prosecuted.

Cammaert wrapped up a visit to Sri Lanka after obtaining first-hand, the status of children affected by the recent conflict between government forces and separatist Tamil rebels in the north of the Indian Ocean nation. 
 
Cammaert was particularly concerned about the effect of hostilities on children.
 
The children had been had been driven from their homes and confined into make shift camps for Internationally Displaced Persons for several months. 

 
An estimated 300,000 IDPs were housed in these closed camps in May after the final thrust by Government forces ended the decades-long civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). 
 
In a press conference at the end of his five-day mission to the country, Cammaert welcomed the increased freedom of movement recently granted to IDPs in the camps, and commended local authorities on the ongoing child protection programmes conducted in partnership with the UN. 
 
The Special Envoy also met with children formerly associated with armed groups and their parents in several rehabilitation centres, and called for the length of their stay in the rehabilitation programmes to be balancedwith the time that they were in the ranks of the armed groups. 
 
 
In Colombo, Cammaert  met with Government officials, representatives of civil society, UN agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – on behalf of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy.

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