The report says that unprecedentedly severe methods were being employed in the crash recruitment drive in the Wanni, an area of the Northern Province controlled by the LTTE, because the LTTE is very short of manpower. It had lost 1,500 fighting cadres since December 1999. Schools and orphanages are the prime targets for recruitment now. The recruits are between 10 and 15 years of age.
Girls have been in a large majority in the current round of recruitment in schools, the report says.
Recently, when some of the 20 girls who were taken from a particular school, wanted to go back, they were isolated, mercilessly assaulted, pushed to the ground and trampled upon, by senior girls as a punishment. Those who want to leave without fulfilling the mandatory seven-year service requirement are chained and confined to bunkers for upto six months. Only 5 per cent of the kid recruits go willingly, the report says, basing its conclusions on information provided by civilians from the area and former LTTE cadres. The report went on to say that the LTTE had declared that the liberation was more important than education. Schools in the Wanni have, as a result, virtually stopped functioning.