Thursday, May 16, 2013

Report: there are 3000 child soldiers in India...

Last year, suspected insurgents in Northeast India Manipur abducted three teenage boys. Despite a missing persons complaint and a police search, they were never found. In Manipur, as well as several other Indian states, it is not uncommon for children to be kidnapped by insurgent groups to become child soldiers. Indeed, around the same time as the boys went missing, five teenage girls laid down arms in front of police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, a stronghold of Maoist rebels. They had been kidnapped them from their village in 2008.

Stories like these have been circulating for years, but officials have largely chosen to ignore or downplay the problem. A new study may shake them out of silence: A report released by last week by the Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) found that there are currently as many as 3000 child soldiers in India. “The recruitment of child soldiers is rampant and hundreds of children remain involved in the conflicts,” the report says.

The ACHR findings suggest that the problem is particularly severe in India’s long-running Maoist insurgency, but that children have also been recruited by insurgent groups in Jammu and Kashmir and parts of northeast India such as Manipur, where separatist groups have clashed with Indian forces for decades. ”In certain areas in eastern India, it is mandatory for families to give at least one of their children to Maoist rebels,” says Suhas Chakma, director of the ACHR. Full story...

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