Save Northern children

The latest move by the LTTE to make it compulsory for students in the Kilinnochchi and Mullaitivu districts who failed their GCE O/L exam at the first shy to join its fighting cadres should open the eyes of those human rights watchers who have right along been selective in apportioning blame on the Government for alleged violations of human rights.

For the first time Velupillai Prabhakaran had dropped all pretence of not letting the war disrupt the academic future of Tamils and issued an edict that would not only see the collapse of the whole educational edifice of the North which was once the pride of the Jaffna population.

This is not a case of merely denying these hapless youth a chance to continue with their education but is also the death knell of the core that formed the ethos of the Northern people where much emphasis was laid on education and academic attainments.

Time was when the North produced some of the most eminent names in the country's administrative sphere in the professions as well as in almost all other fields of endeavour. There are famous names that are synonymous with the medical profession to this day who hailed from the North. Their industry, drive and enterprise were cited as examples.

Their appetite for knowledge and education was the envy among people in the South. All these were achieved due to the great emphasis laid on education by the Northerners. Now this edifice has been destroyed in one fell swoop by Velupillai Prabhakaran.

His desperation to induct additional manpower has even blinded the LTTE leader to the rare credit accorded to him in the South where it was widely believed that while the war raged on in all its fury the one activity that continued uninterrupted was education in the North, unlike in the South where extremist parties orchestrated university strikes at the drop of a hat.

The mass defections from the outfit and the opening of facilities by the Government to accommodate the fleeing Tiger cadres and train them in job oriented vocations may also come into the equation in the LTTE leader's thinking, so as to keep as many youth in his fold.

No doubt coming straight out of school these youth obviously will not have had any arms training and it is they who would be sent to frontlines to face the current military onslaught of the Government Forces.

We hope that the NGOs and their foreign sponsors who never miss an opportunity to pounce on some infringement or other on the part of the Security Forces would turn their attention to this most glaring atrocity where youth are being virtually plucked out of their schools to be turned into killing machines.

How will this accord with the claim of the LTTE to be the sole representatives of the Tamil people? These are the 'material' which will later be turned into human bombs. What became of the pledges made to the UN Rapporteur on Children Olara Otunnu by the LTTE about releasing all child soldiers and that no forcible recruitment would be carried out in the future or of rehabilitating child conscripts and releasing them to their parents as pledged by Anton Balasingham during the initial rounds of Peace Talks.

Those busybodies who descend on Sri Lanka from time to time and lecture us on human rights should ask themselves if the human rights of the children living under the captivity of the LTTE are of less importance than the alleged violations of human rights committed by the State.

The Government on its part should lose no time in bringing this matter to the attention of the widest international audience if for no other reason than to have the world's human rights bodies focus on how the future of innocent school children is being cut short by a ruthless terrorist outfit in its quest for an utopian dream.