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| Friday, 16 April 2004 |
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Editorial | |
| News Business Features Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
| Please forward your comments to the Editor, Daily News. Email : editor@dailynews.lk Snail mail : Daily News, 35, D.R. Wijewardene Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429429 / 94 11 2421181 Fax : 94 11 2429210 Home sweet home One hundred and fifty families in Vakarai enjoyed a totally joyous Sinhala and Tamil New Year on April 13 after their children were released by the LTTE from its 'baby brigades'. This demobilisation is the single biggest formal release of child soldiers by the LTTE. Many others have given up arms and returned home on their own accord after the recent clashes in the East. UNICEF, which facilitated the release of the former LTTE child soldiers, believes that the LTTE still has hundreds more children in its ranks despite the current ceasefire. Hundreds of children have died in combat while many others have been maimed for life. The UNICEF Representative in Sri Lanka, Ted Chaiban, spoke for all those children on New Year's eve: "Although we are very glad to see these children being reunited with their families, there are hundreds and possibly thousands more still in the ranks of the LTTE. All of these children deserve to experience what these children are feeling today. The joy of meeting their families again. The joy of going home." The government and the UNICEF would like to see more children from the LTTE experience the joy of going home. Some of the child soldiers are as young as eight. All these boys and girls have been forcibly conscripted and given combat training. As yesterday's front-page picture in the Daily News depicts, they have to carry mortar bombs in their backpacks instead of books; guns instead of pens. They learn battlefield tactics instead of classroom subjects. In their young minds, they have to harbour thoughts of violence instead of love and compassion. As UNICEF points out, these children have had to live as soldiers for years and have been denied the rights of other children to learn, play and live in the security of a family environment. Now it is the LTTE's turn to express their commitment to the peace process through the demobilisation of all child soldiers and through a total halt to the conscription of children. The LTTE must honour its obligations under the Action Plan for Children Affected by War, which was approved by both the Government and the LTTE. The authorities, the LTTE, UNICEF and Action Plan partners (ILO, Save the Children, Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation, UNDP and UNHCR) must work in unison to rehabilitate underage combatants who have been mentally scarred. Most of them need extensive psychological counselling and basic education before reintegration to the wider society. Children do not belong in the theatre of war. No one has the right to rob them of their innocence and to deprive them of education. The peace process has given the LTTE an ideal opportunity to shun the use of child soldiers. The time has come to send these children home, where they rightly belong. Pedal power Cycling is back in fashion. People around the world are rediscovering the joy of riding on two wheels. This trend is most visible in Europe, whose biking renaissance is attracting more 'converts' everyday. Take Denmark, where almost everyone rides a bike. One in every three Copenhagen inhabitants uses a bike for commuting, thus helping fill the city's 323 kilometres of cycling paths. With 10,000 kilometres of cycling routes, Denmark is a paradise for bike lovers. It is easy to comprehend the charms of cycling. Cheap and cheerful, a bicycle uses no fuel, is non-polluting and on a weekday, could be much faster than the [bumper-to-bumper] traffic. No other mode of conveyance could possibly match that feeling of total freedom. Moreover, cycling exercises the body and soothes the mind. While transport authorities in developed countries are exhorting citizens to pedal on, the opposite is happening in developing countries, which are abandoning the humble two-wheeler in favour of costly public transport systems and tacitly encouraging people to buy cars. This results in chaos on poorly-maintained roads, which have to accommodate more vehicles than they can. Cyclists have to battle hordes of vehicles and evade being hit as they pedal amid the traffic. In Sri Lanka, for instance, there is little cycling infrastructure. Cycle lanes theoretically exist in the Highway Code, but we are yet to see one on a road. There are no specific parking lots for bicycles. The authorities too are not making any attempt to coax more people to switch to pedal power at least for short trips, which could save millions of dollars in fuel costs and protect the environment. It is time that we drew up a cycling policy that takes all these factors into account. Local bicycle manufacturers must be given more incentives to turn out cheaper, high-quality bikes. The media should be used to promote cycling especially in urban areas - it is already popular in the provinces. Cycle lanes as well as parking places must be demarcated. Many cyclists are killed in accidents every year, mostly due to head injuries. Helmets, mandatory for motorbikes, could be made compulsory for cyclists as well. These can be locally manufactured as imported ones are generally expensive. A positive view of cycling and its benefits along these lines would certainly propel the 'poor man's vehicle' to greater lengths. |
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