Other People's Wars - Caledonia Wake Up Call

Other Peoples’ Wars – Chapter OneTiger, or else receive no advertising from within the community and risk intimidatingviolence. There are also controls over Tamil language DVDs and VHS tapes, to limit theeffects of films produced in India’s Tamil Nadu State. These allow the Tamil leadershipto quickly mobilize large numbers of members of the community for protests, and ensurea high degree of solidarity. 27However, the successful transmission of the insurgent’s messages still depends upon thevoluntary selection of pro-insurgent media by members of the population they hope tolead. Fortunately for the terrorists, Western authorities are usually uninterested inmonitoring domestic media in foreign languages, and even more disinterested insponsoring alternative viewpoints in Arabic, Punjabi, Spanish, or Tamil to compete withthe messages that support the insurgents. This reluctance to contest insurgent propagandaon the airwaves may be a profound weakness.When it comes to conditioning, few slates are so blank as those of children; and manyinsurgent and ideological groups have eagerly turned to using them.The Islamist Sudanese government has been waging a brutal civil war against the Nuba,who want a secular and democratic state within that country’s borders. Sudan had hostedbin Laden until the late 1990s, only gently expelling them when pressured and bribed todo so. The cruel irony of this type of brutality being unleashed by a radical Islamistregime cannot be overlooked, especially when Islamic fundamentalists around worldwhine to the media about Western “crusades,” and describe themselves as “victims” ofthe United States and the West. The Sudanese government’s fundamentalist militaryhave tried to systematically starve out the Nuba, raped women to “thin their blood line,”and destroyed homes and crops. Nuba children are routinely rounded up by the military,with males forced to take up arms against their own people and females forced intosexual slavery.The situation for children in Sierra Leone is also horrific. There, UNICEF estimatesthat as many as 5,000 have served in combat and another 5,400 have been conscriptedinto support roles. Young people were forced into participating in acts such as hackingoff the limbs of civilians. Both the rebels and government are guilty of this heinouspractice.One of the world’s worst violators when it comes to using children in combat andterrorist operations is the LTTE. It has repeatedly been cited by internationalorganizations for this practice, yet because it is itself an illegitimate organization, no trueform of sanction can be applied to it. The LTTE’s dirty secret is that the majority of itscombat soldiers are children. The Tigers have become very skilled at manipulatingTamil youth into joining its ranks, and begins recruiting them as young as eight years ofage. Older children, already serving in its ranks have been known to attend grade schoolsand show off their assault rifles and talk about the LTTE’s “glory”.Other methods inc lude psychological pressures and threats to family members. Loss ofloved ones, and the desperate poverty which exists in LTTE-controlled areas alsocontribute to the pressures to join. As a former Canadian Ambassador, William Bauer27 Cheran, Prof. R.; The Sixth Genre: Memory, History and the Tamil Diaspora Imagination; MargaInstitute, 200122