'I'm only 16. They gave me a rifle. It was heavy. They said we had to go forward. If we came back, they would shoot us'

Tamil children as young as 11 were forced at gunpoint to fight for the Tigers in Sri Lanka's civil war. Survivors talked of their ordeal to Gethin Chamberlain in Ambepusse

Gethin Chamberlain The Observer, Sunday 31 May 2009

Darchiga Kuken was sheltering in a bunker in the Mullaitivu area when a group of about 20 Tamil Tiger soldiers arrived and demanded that she went with them.

"I was sick with chicken pox. My mother and father were screaming and crying, saying that I was sick and pleading with them not to take me," she said. The men went away. And then at 5pm on 14 March they came back. They called me to come out and then they grabbed me and put me in a jeep. I started to cry. I was shouting: 'Mother, father, help me.' "

The 16-year-old is now being held in what the government describes as a "rehabilitation centre", a jungle camp built on a hillside outside the town of Ambepusse in the south of the country. Here children like her, who were forced to fight on the front line in the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka, gave the Observer compelling evidence of war crimes committed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

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