By Moa Jamir
Last week, students from a certain school in Kiphire Town were pictured eagerly brandishing an 84 mm Rocket Launcher, on their visit to a paramilitary camp.
The students got an opportunity to get “exposure” in “handling arms” a news report stated, quoting a Major as saying, “The intention of arms display is to let the students get an opportunity to observe different kinds of the arms and to invoke the eagerness in the minds of the students to take up military service as career.” Some of the arms displayed and handled were AK rifles, SLR, Granite launcher, 9 mm, Sten carbine, 84mm rocket launcher, LMG and trench mortar, it added.
A cursory browsing over news reports on the activities of the security forces will highlight how such display and handling weapon is integral part of any students’ visits to a military camp or exhibition, especially in conflict zones.
What would you expect from a military camp-Pink roses? One may retort. Herein lies the question-Is it simply a strategy of motivating the young minds to take up military service as a career or a tacit psychological warfare as part of the counter insurgency strategy.
Such gesture is irony at its best.
The Central government has often accused the recruitment of children by ‘non-state’ actors. A report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council, United Nations on 5 June 2015 quoted the Ministry of Home Affairs of India as saying that Naxalites recruited boys and girls between 6 and 12 years of age into specific children’s units.
“Violence and the use of schools as recruitment grounds (has) affected access to education for children in Naxalite areas,” it said. Children were reportedly “lured into joining armed groups” in the face of the lack of livelihood alternatives, but were also abducted and forcibly recruited, through coercion of family members and the threat of violence.
UNICEF defines a 'Child Soldier' as any person below the age of 18 and maintain that children undergo varying degrees of indoctrination, often verging on the brutal. While the official voluntary recruitment age in India is 17 ½, yet many military prep schools such as Rashtriya Indian Military College or Sainik Schools and the National Cadet Corps recruit children between the ages of 11 ½ to 13 years.
In 2009, UNICEF released a report concerning children in conflict areas and highlighted the changing face of armed conflict and war in the world today. It noted that while there has been a decrease in inter-state conflict, conflicts within countries and across borders is on the rise, where the state is using paramilitary and proxy forces to fight these hidden wars.
Children are children-they are easily influenced by the sights and sounds of the world around them. And this remain sketched in their impressionable minds to make life changing decisions.
Therefore, it is imperative that they do not need to be told that the only refuge to things happening around them is to take recourse with guns or the military – not by the state actor, or by any other non state actors.
On the part of the paramilitary forces providing ‘opportunity’ for students to lay their hands on weapons, they would do best to serve the public by checking law and order situation, ensuring safety and security of the citizens and other humanitarian works.
Initiating children/students into handling weapons is neither an ‘opportunity’ nor service rendered.
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