Sri Lankan mob kills 25 former child soldiers
ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Oct. 25 — Angry that former Tamil rebel child soldiers took a Sinhalese officer hostage, thousands of villagers stormed a rehabilitation center Wednesday, killing 25 of the ex-fighters with stones, knives and swords.
After seizing the officer late Tuesday, the former Tamil Tiger fighters — who ranged in age from 14 to 25 — shut off the lights in the government-run center, chased off the staff, closed the gates — and demanded to be set free. About 3,000 villagers stormed the center at dawn Wednesday, killing 25 of the one-time child soldiers — two of whom were beaten to death with iron rods, said Rienzie Perera, a police spokesman in Colombo. Nineteen of the former fighters were wounded. The hostage was released unharmed. The mob set fire to two of the buildings. Ten hours after the attack, smoke was still coming out of the camp atop a hill overlooking tea gardens near Bandarawela, a town of 60,000 about 125 miles east of the capital Colombo.
Several international human rights groups have accused the rebels of using children as combatants in their 17-year-old war to carve out a homeland for the Tamil minority in the north and east. The fighting has left more than 63,500 dead. The rebels, known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have not responded to the accusations. The government-run center near Bandarawela held 44 young men, most of whom had been seized as children and forced to serve with rebels. After surrendering to the army or being captured, former child soldiers spend a year in the government center receiving psychological counseling and learning a trade.
President Chandrika Kumaratunga condemned the attack. ‘’At no time were there any incidents among the detainees and the management,’’ she said. ‘’There were no incidents with the neighbors either.’’ She accused ‘’external forces’’ for the trouble, but did not elaborate. The mainstream Tamil political party denounced the killings. Joseph Parajasingham, a lawmaker from the Tamil United Liberation Front, called the incident ‘’despicable in a democratic society which hopes to follow the rule of law.’’
Sri Lanka’s civil war was born of an ancient conflict between the majority largely Buddhist Sinhalese — who make up 76 percent of Sri Lanka’s 18.6 million people — and the Tamils, largely Hindu and numbering 3.2 million. The rebels say Tamils can only prosper away from domination by the Sinhalese majority. The government denies any discrimination against the Tamils.