SLA camps are not safe until UN send neutral observers for the IDPs to leave LTTE areas and seek refuge.
But the fact that a large number of unwilling persons have been conscripted to fight must have an adverse internal impact within the LTTE.
Resistance to the LTTE is either passive or tragically fatalistic. Our sources affirmed that a few girl conscripts used their weapons to kill themselves but were unable to give more details. The girls found the militaristic environment and the injunction to kill utterly unbearable. On further inquiry, we were assured that such things do happen as people hear when they move around areas where battles are fought and meet LTTE cadres who talk.
What is more significant they said was the inexperienced new conscripts faced with the terrible sensation of battle and deafening explosions around them, taking refuge in their cyanide capsule or their own bullet.
A number of Christian churches in the Wanni are stridently pacifist. But as a group they found themselves unable to resist conscription of their young. When one of their young dies in battle, the ministers of the churches and the Pentecostal Sisters have preached at funerals that God in his mercy took away these young persons to spare them the pain of killing others.
Young conscripts who resist the LTTE as conscientious objectors are liable for heavy punishment. For this reason several of them have taken personal vows and informed their parents and guides not to worry on their account as in whatever situation they find themselves, they have sworn not to kill, but are ready to be killed instead.
The LTTE had a large camp at Moonru-Murippu now overrun by government forces. It had scores of metal cages with pointed wires extending inside. Conscripted persons who refused to fight were shut inside. The pointed wires ensured that they had to stand in a bent position and get pricked if they tried to move. They were let out only when they agreed to the LTTE s demands. These cages, had during the ceasefire, been used to coerce, particularly businessmen, abducted for extortion.
UTHR |