{"id":82101,"date":"2018-10-18T11:44:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T18:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=82101"},"modified":"2018-10-18T11:45:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T18:45:06","slug":"the-concept-of-reconciliation-has-reached-paranoid-proportions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/10\/18\/the-concept-of-reconciliation-has-reached-paranoid-proportions\/","title":{"rendered":"The concept of reconciliation has reached paranoid proportions"},"content":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The Island editorial on Learn from History (13 Oct) touched on an important issue concerning the use of children and teachers in the North to canvass the release of LTTE suspects now in custody.<\/p>\n

As mentioned in the editorial the irony of the effort on the part of the organizers of the movement was to force the Jaffna parents and the students to \u00a0forget the reign of terror unleashed on them by the LTTE in little over 8 years ago. Here is a report from the UNICEF in 2004 on the fate of children in the North.<\/p>\n

A UNICEF spokesman in Sri Lanka, James Elder, said child combatants bear deep psychological scars. Even those spared from combat lost precious years that cannot be replaced. “Child soldiers in Sri Lanka live in a theatre of violence and suffering,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Many in this current conflict may be thrown into the front line at a time of fierce fighting where they can be killed or maimed. Instead of hope, fear defines their childhood. Their recruitment is intolerable. The Tigers have a long tradition of recruiting child soldiers. UNICEF has recorded more than 6000 cases of children recruited between 2003 and the end of last year\u201d<\/p>\n

By the year 2009 the number of children snatched by the LTTE and used as child soldiers reached 15 000. While the parents whose children were taken by force by the LTTE were traumatized and lived in the faint hope that the children will return someday, the children were brain washed by the LTTE ideologues to convert them to be blood thirsty terrorists and to be killed or maimed as they were used as cannon fodder by the LTTE.<\/p>\n

However bad and violent the past have been to the North\u2019s child soldiers of the LTTE in the twilight of reminiscence, the present day LTTE fronts ironically are forcing the current generation to \u2018fight\u2019 for the \u201dfreedom of the repressors of their elder brothers and sisters! The wheel has come a full circle and the children are being dragged to put their heads to the Tiger\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n

The lack of balance in assessing the concept of \u2018reconciliation\u2019 has reached paranoid proportions in the hands of crafty pro-LTTE politicians who are neither fair by the children of the North nor by the people in the North.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RANJITH SOYSA The Island editorial on Learn from History (13 Oct) touched on an important issue concerning the use of children and teachers in the North to canvass the release of LTTE suspects now in custody. As mentioned in the editorial the irony of the effort on the part of the organizers of the movement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ranjith-soysa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}