Fighters from the Karuna group on patrol in eastern Sri Lanka. The organisation is blamed for abducting children as young as 12 and forcing them into battle (Julia Drapkin/AP)

Men in black arrive in a white truck and children disappear - By Jeremy Page

A shadowy group is blamed for forcing young people to fight in Sri Lanka

THE white van came in broad daylight, as it always does, cruising through the village like a hungry predator to claim another part of Sri Lanka's youth.

Sundari knew that she would never see her 15-year-old son again after the men in black dragged him into the vehicle and sped away from her home near the eastern city of Batticaloa.

She assumed at first that they were Tamil Tigers, who for years have been forcibly recruiting children to join their bloody two-decade struggle for an independent homeland.

These men, though, were not Tigers. At least not any more.

They were, she learnt later, from a shadowy splinter group that split from the Tigers in 2004 and is now fighting alongside government forces to try to push the rebels out of eastern Sri Lanka.

Known as the Karuna Group, it has abducted between 300 and 900 children 'some as young as 12' since March, according to international and local aid workers.

Its escalating activity has emerged as a key factor behind the upsurge in violence that has killed more than 2,000 people this year and left a 2002 ceasefire agreement in tatters.

As government and Tiger representatives left Sri Lanka yesterday for peace talks in Geneva, starting on Saturday, analysts cited Karuna as one of the main obstacles to a negotiated settlement. 'Karuna has damaged the Tigers' image as a united, indestructible force in the east,' said Christian Le Miere, the Asia editor of Jane's Country Risk. 'The immediate effect has been to undermine the negotiations.'

Karuna was formed when the Tigers' leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, fell out with his former bodyguard and top military commander, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, better known as 'Colonel Karuna'.

In the past year Karuna has launched a series of attacks on the Tigers from government-controlled territory, weakening their grip on the eastern districts of Batticaloa and Trincomalee. But in the run-up to the peace talks the Tigers have fought back elsewhere in the country to bolster their negotiating position. Last week they carried out their worst suicide bombing, killing more than 100 sailors near the town of Habarana, followed by an unprecedented assault on the southern tourist city of Galle.

Now Karuna is implicating the Government in the kidnap and exploitation of hundreds of children, according to aid workers, truce monitors, witnesses and relatives. 'There is some sort of complicity by the Government in what is happening to children here,' said one aid worker who asked not to be identified. 'Most people feel there is no difference between the Government and Karuna.'

The Government denies co-operating with Karuna and last month appointed a judge to investigate reported abductions. 'We don't have any links with Karuna, and anybody carrying out abductions will face legal action,' said Lakshman Hulugalle, a national security spokesman. However, Batticaloa residents and Norwegian-led truce monitors say that they regularly see Karuna members ' armed and in black uniforms or civilian dress ' working alongside troops and police.

They say that government forces allow Karuna to transport children through dozens of checkpoints on the way to a training camp near the town of Welikande. Karuna's political wing, the TMVP, has opened several offices around eastern Sri Lanka recently, many beside military camps.

Sundari (whose name has been changed to protect her) went to the TMVP office in Batticaloa, where children are often seen working, after her son was taken three weeks ago.

Officials there promised that he would be released, but he still has not returned home. 'I'll never see him again now,' she said. 'My only hope is that they reach some agreement at the peace talks.' Four other mothers had similar stories about their sons being seized and forced to work as soldiers or labourers for Karuna. None reported the abductions to the police for fear of retribution.

E. Prethip, an official in the TMVP's Batticaloa office, denied recruiting minors and said that the Tigers were carrying out the abductions and blaming Karuna. He also denied working with government forces. Analysts say that Karuna is at the heart of the Government's strategy to divide and conquer the Tigers by exploiting tensions between northern and eastern Tamils.

The Tigers have been fighting since 1983 for an independent state in the northeast to protect Tamils ' who are mostly Hindu ' from discrimination by the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority.

Karuna's leader says he split from the Tigers because too many eastern Tamils were dying. The Tigers say he was caught embezzling money and violating their code of conduct.

THE BATTLE FOR CHILDHOOD

Article 38 of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child states: 'Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of 15 years do not take a direct part in hostilities'

The UN says that 300,000 children ' some as young as 6, and 40 per cent of them girls ' are illegal recruits in more than 30 conflicts around the world

Children are not held accountable for war crimes, creating concern that commanders are delegating to them the worst acts of violence

In Colombia about 11,000 children are employed by guerrillas.

In 1861, during the American Civil War, President Lincoln said that boys under 18 could enlist with parental consent. The youngest wounded soldier in the conflict was 12-year-old William Black

At end of the Second World War, boys aged 13 were fighting in defence of Berlin

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-...21834_1,00.html

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