The Alleged accusation that Karuna recruiting children for his fighting force with the assistance of the Sri Lanka army is a pure fabrication.

By Charles Perera

Karuna could not have recruited children for his fighting force with or without the assistance of Sri Lanka Army. It is a deliberate lie concocted by Allan Rock, UN representative, to mislead the UN Security Council, and clear the LTTE terrorists. May be he did so initially after disbanding his followers when he left LTTE, but not after.

The circumstantial evidence show that Karuna has not recruited children for his fighting force. Let us go into the question in a sequential order.
First ,how do the Tamil people in the East whose children have been kidnapped recognise the the Karuna group, the LTTE terrorists, or the Sri Lanka army. They recognise them from their uniforms. When Vaharai was captured the army found a tailoring shop in terrorist camp where the terrorists had their uniforms made. In this shop were found clothes to prepare the uniforms of the Sri Lanka army.

Therefore the terrorists could have prepared uniforms in Sri Lanka army clothes and wore them when they went on missions of recruitment of children for their forces. They may also have had what ever distinctive clothes the Karuna Group wore. The poor villages whose children were kidnapped by these terrorists in their different uniforms posing as Karunas group and the army, were obviously deceived to believe it was the Karuna Group with the Army Soldiers who kidnapped their children.

Karuna Mulitharan does not have a military force. Because he does not confront the LTTE in face to face clashes. He uses different methods such as ambushing the LTTE terrorists, or attacking them in small groups. For that type of fighting the terrorists, Karuna needs strong fight hardened men, who he can depend on, as they have to be fighting on their own . If children recruited against their wish are used for this type of fighting, they may have abandon their posts and escaped. Further more for this type of warfare Karuna need not have a large fighting force. Few men would be sufficient. In Sierra Maestra, Fidel Castro had very few followers to fight
Batista’s army.

Karuna has no safe place in the East, and he is continuously on the run from place to place, therefore he cannot possibly have a large force of men and child soldiers, to be burdened with. The child soldiers with the LTTE terrorists we have seen in pictures, and there is evidence of some of them released by the tigers, and there are also those who have run away from tiger camps and surrendered to the army. But there had been no such incidents of child soldiers running away from the Karuna Group and surrendering to the Police, the Army or the SLMM.

Therefore there is good reasons to believe Karuna has no child soldiers in his fighting force, and the Sri Lanka Army had not helped Karuna to recruit children to his fighting force, as Allan Rock has falsely alleged in his report.