Making Children Bear Arms Is Child Abuse

The chilling pictures published by ISIS/Daesh of a small child thought to be British, proudly brandishing a gun, are symptomatic of a worrying trend by political extremists to try to “normalise” the phenomenon of children bearing arms, supposedly in the defence of a particular cause. I’ve seen examples on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict and child soldiers have been a sickening feature of a number of recent civil wars, such as in Uganda, Liberia and Sri Lanka — in some cases with children being forced to kill or else be killed or tortured themselves. You will even find photos of American kids posing with weapons with the encouragement of their gun-loving parents, despite the fact that each year numerous victims, both young and old, get accidentally shot by young children in America. For supporters of the US constitutional right to bear arms, the issue at stake is “freedom”, but I would argue that even in countries where it is legal for adults to own firearms it should be a serious criminal offence to encourage or allow children to handle them. For me, that amounts to child abuse, and a particularly pernicious form of child abuse, for kids often do not have a developed sense of right and wrong, or of the nature of killing and death. I believe that if parents proudly pose with their infants who are brandishing weapons they should be prosecuted for child abuse and sentenced accordingly.

Why Sri Lanka’s Tamils Have Occupied Parliament Square

Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils converged spontaneously on Parliament Square in Westminster today, to swell the ongoing demonstration of several hundred, as news came in of Sri Lankan government forces breaking through earth defences to the last stronghold of separatist rebels, the Tamil Tigers, amid fears of massive civilian casualties. As it is, tens of thousands of Tamil civilians have been living (or in many cases dying) in a humanitarian catastrophe that much of the outside world has ignored. Hence the demonstrations in Parliament Square . This situation is particularly relevant to the UK, given Britain’s colonial legacy and its role in creating a unitary state of Ceylon, with an inbuilt Tamil minority, and the presence of a large number of Tamils living in the UK, not least in London.

 One of the hunger strikers, Subramanyam Parameswaran, most of whose immediate family has perished in the recent troubles on the island, is continuing without food, and he lies motionless in a tent in the square, though receiving regular medical attention from sympatisers. A high percentage of Sri Lankan Tamils in the UK are doctors and other professional people.

Simon Hughes, MP for North Southwark and Bermondsey, has been working tirelessly on the issue and is due in New York this week, to help present the Tamils’ case to the United Nations. The Prime Minister’s Special Representative, Des Browne MP, has already gone there. Even the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has declared that he is ‘gravely concerned’ about the situation in Sri Lanka. And yet the Sri Lankan government has turned a deaf ear to pleas from the international media for access to the affected region, to report honestly what is happening, and from humanitarian agencies who rightly fear for the safety and health of the civilian Tamil population effectively caught in a trap. Even more important, there needs to be an immediate and permanent ceasefire and a political, not a military, appoach to the fundamental issues.

The Sri Lankan government believes ‘victory’ is in sight over the Tamil Tigers. As an objective commentator with a first-hand knowledge of the region, I do not endorse violence. But I recognise that the armed struggle in Sri Lanka (as in so many other parts of the world) grew out of generations of frustration among Tamils in Sri Lanka at being treated as second-class citizens. After the 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Colombo (which I witnessed with my own eyes, seeing people being hacked with knives and other makeshift weapons), the situation went from bad to worse. As one Tamil doctor from Bexley told me in Parliament Square this evening, ‘We should have made this demonstration 30 years ago. We were too quiet. We are a reasonable, educated community. Now the young people have shown us how to make our voice heard!’

Link: www.tamilsforum.com

Peace and Justice for Sri Lanka’s Tamils

This afternoon I spoke at a large gathering of London-based Tamils in Alperton (Brent), who were there to hear what Liberal Democrats had to say about the appalling humanitarian situation in the Vanni area of Sri Lanka. Though there has been comparatively little coverage in the British media (partly because the Sri Lankan government has kept journalists out), the Tamil civilian population there has come under horrendous and protracted bombardment as the government has tried to crush the separatist LTTE. Colombo says it believes the rebels are almost beaten, but as I said in my speech, there can never be a permanent military solution to the Tamil question on the island. That can only be resolved through negotiated/political means, which means delivering peace with dignity and justice and a substantial degree of self-rule to the predominantly Tamil areas, whether that is as an autonomous region within a federal state, or a separate entity; it is not for an outsider like me to judge.

I was dropped into the deep end of Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict in the summer of 1983, when, by sheer fluke, I flew into Colombo on the very morning when the anti-Tamil incidents flared up. As I was driven into the city from the airport, Tamil businesses and homes were literally going up in flames and later I saw gangs of youths being disgorged from minibuses, armed with machetes, knives, sticks and other improvised weapons, ready to lay into anyone of the wrong ethnic group. It is a tragedy that more than a quarter of a century later, the issue has not been satisfactorily resolved. Britain as the former colonial power must engage more proactively in the situation and the EU itself should use its undoubted clout to promote true democracy and human rights on the island.