Child soldiers return home
Given opportunity to resume normal lives:
Lakshmi DE SILVA
The last batch of rehabilitated LTTE child soldiers, 108 boys and 90
girls were handed over to their parents yesterday by the Rehabilitation
Authority, Commissioner General of Rehabilitation Brigadier Sudantha
Ranasinghe told Daily News yesterday.
They were minors between the ages of 12 years to 17 years. So we had
to hand them over to their parents legally through the legal court
procedure. Government child probation officers, Social Services
Department officers and relevant Divisional Secretaries were also
present at the Vavuniya Magistrate’s Courts when the children were
handed back to their parents. All the children were given certificates,
he explained.
“It was the wish of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that all ex-child
soldiers of the terrorist group should be rehabilitated and given the
opportunity to go back to their parents to resume normal lives,” he
noted. “These children were rehabilitated at the Hindu College,
Ratmalana and they enjoyed life with us. These innocent children were
forcibly conscripted to the terrorist movement by the terrorist leaders
but now they are reformed as normal children again,” he said.
“They played cricket, participated in camp fires, did scouting and
learned a lot of other skills like any other child would learn in a
Colombo school. They even went to the Mc Donalds and enjoyed meals,”
Brigadier Ranasinghe added.
These helpless victims of the war were pardoned by President Mahinda
Rajapaksa and given all the facilities to train them and bring them back
to the normal civil life. Even after they go back to their native places
they would go back to their schools and continue studies, like other
children of their hometowns or villages,” he explained.
“We had a farewell party for the children. Not only the children,
but, my daughter also cried when they departed. But I am happy because
this is a beginning of a new era for these children who have now much
hope for the future,” he noted.
There were 294 child soldiers and we had released 96 children back to
their parents earlier,” he said.
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