(HRW) – At Human Rights Watch, one thing we’ve learned is that justice can sometimes take a long time. Nearly five years ago, I was contacted by a Dutch prosecutor. He was bringing a case against five people who had been raising millions of euros in Europe for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a secessionist armed group that had fought for decades against the Sri Lankan government until their defeat in 2009. Fundraising for the Tamil Tigers was illegal in the Netherlands, due to the group’s long history of gross human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The group had massacred civilians, carried out hundreds of suicide bombings, and recruited thousands of boys and girls into their forces. The prosecutor told me that in addition to charging the defendants with illegal fundraising, he was also charging them with participating in a criminal organization that committed war crimes – specifically, the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
