Rights group slams India, Maoist rebels over child soldiers
Human Rights Watch yesterday demanded the Indian government and Maoist rebels stop using child fighters in their escalating battle in the country's eastern jungles.
The US-based group called on the Indian government "to develop a scheme to identify, demobilise and rehabilitate" children caught up in the insurgency, centred in Chhattisgarh state.
"A particular horror of the Chhattisgarh conflict is that children are participating in the violence," said Jo Becker, children's rights advocate for Human Rights Watch.
"It's shameful that both India's government and the Maoists are exploiting children in such a dangerous fashion."
It said the Maoists, known in India as Naxalites, trained children "in the use of rifles, landmines and improvised explosive devices" and pushed them into "armed exchanges with government security forces."
The group said a state-backed anti-Maoist militia, the Salwa Judum, as well as state police also recruited under-18s.
"Many eyewitnesses of joint raids by government security forces and Salwa Judum members described seeing dozens of children dressed in police uniforms armed with rifles," the group said.
The Maoist insurgency in India grew out of a peasant uprising in 1967 and has now hit half of India's 29 states.
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