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Land Mines: Still Killing in the Fields

Every month some 1,200 people are maimed or injured in a landmine accident somewhere in the world.

By Joseph Hong

Loung Ung was born into a prominent family, her father a member of the Cambodian Royal Secret Service under Prince Sihanouk. As a young girl, Ung was separated from her family during Cambodia’s civil war, and trained to become a child soldier. Both her parents and two of her siblings had died under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, before Ung escaped, eventually settling in Vermont through sponsorship from the Holy Family Church.

Loung Ung

Ung returned to Cambodia in 1995, where she heard that 30 of her relatives had died. She also learned about the 10 million landmines in Cambodia’s countryside, which have continued to destroy the lives of families long after the war.

When Ung returned to the United States, she joined the staff of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation in its “Campaign for a Landmine Free World.”

Landmines: Hidden Killers Total number of landmines: 110 million in 64 countries HUMAN COST OF LANDMINES Every month, about 2,000 people are involved in a landmine accident somewhere in the world. Of these, about 800 are killed, while the rest suffer varying degrees of maiming or other injury. One de-miner will be killed and two injured for every 5,000 successfully removed mines. Overall, about 85 percent of reported landmine casualties are men, many of whom are soldiers. However, in some regions, 30 percent of the victims are women. Victims are often poor, and their injuries make them a burden on their already struggling family. Many women are abandoned by their husbands. The most common landmine injury is loss of one or more limbs. DOLLAR COST OF LANDMINES: To buy one: $3-$10 To remove one: $300-$1,000 The cost of removing all existing mines would be $50- to $100-billion. Treating mine injuries is much more difficult than treating other war injuries, such as bullet wounds, in particular because of the way dirt and shrapnel are lodged in wounded areas. The estimated cost of treating and fitting a victim with an artificia| limb is estimated at $3000. According to U.N. estimates, that is $750 million for all 250,000 amputees around the world. Artificial limbs must be replaced regularly, at a cost of about $125 each. For a child of 10 years of age, approximately $3,125 would need to be spent on medical appliances before he or she reached the age of 60. In most developing countries, this amount is prohibitively expensive. Source: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Online; link to source page.

As of Dec. 12, 2000, 109 nations have ratified the Ottawa Treaty, an international convention to prohibit the use, stockpiling or production of anti-personnel mines. However, Russia, China and the United States have yet to sign. The United States, with a stockpile of approximately 11 million anti-personnel mines, has the fourth largest arsenal of these weapons in the world.

Some 60 to 70 million anti-personnel landmines are deployed in 68 countries. Every 22 seconds, a person is killed or maimed by a landmine, with 30 to 40 percent of the victims under age 15, estimates UNICEF.

As a spokesperson for Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation’s “Campaign for a Landmine Free World,” Ung has given talks at universities, conferences and corporations. Ung is also the author of First They Killed My Father, which chronicles her experiences in Cambodia.

Ung talks to AsianWeek about her activism.

AsianWeek: How did you get involved in“Campaign for a Landmine Free World”?

Loung Ung: When I went back to Cambodia, in 1995, I was just overwhelmed by all the landmine victims surrounding the airport. The minute you get out of the airport there are all these amputees that are begging. Then, when I went to the market and when I went to the temple, and when I went to the restaurant, just everywhere you went in Cambodia, there were amputees.

AW: Were they of all ages or from a certain generation?

LU: All ages … women, men, young children, older men. When I came back to the United States, I was shocked to find out that we had over 40,000 amputees in Cambodia, for a population of only 10 million people. I also found out that there were approximately 46 million landmines in Cambodia — a country the size of Oklahoma.

AW: Were these from the war in the late ’70s?

LU: Some of them were from the war but a lot of them are from after the war. During the war, the landmines were more localized. But right after the war, when people were trying to escape across the borders or trying to go back home, the Pol Pot regime planted more mines to keep people in place. Right after the war, when people were going home to go to their lands, they were stepping on landmines at a rate of about 500 people per month. And now the numbers are still 50 to a 100 people every month.

AW: Has Thailand or any other bordering countries planted landmines as a deterrent for Cambodians to cross into their country?

LU: Many of the mines are just in Cambodia. During the war a lot of people had put landmines in Cambodia, such as U.S. troops, Vietnamese troops, the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge put a lot of landmines on the border to prevent people from going to Thailand and to prevent people from coming in. If you saw the movie The Killing Fields, it shows as people tried to escape Cambodia after the war, they were stepping on mines. Pol Pot called the mines his “silent sentinels of death” and his “eternal soldiers.” So when I went back to Cambodia and saw this, it was just so shocking to me I decided to join the campaign.

AW: What is the organization’s plan for removing these landmines?

UNICEF estimates that 30 to 40 percent of landmine victims are under age 15. Courtesy of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

LU: “The Campaign for a Landmine Free World” is a program of the Vietnam Veterans of America Program Foundation. We have groups that work on different things in different landmine hot-spots in the world. We have a group that works with legislation, hoping to get the United States to sign a treaty to ban landmines. We have people who work with programs with people getting the mines out of the ground — de-mining programs and trying to survey where the mines are located. We have groups that focus on victim assistance. We have clinics in Cambodia, El Salvador, Vietnam, Sierra Leone and Kosovo, where we manufacture prosthetic limbs for victims of landmines. And we have an education part of it, which is what I do. I also do a little bit of everything else but mostly trying to educate people all over the world about landmines by speaking at conferences, colleges and universities, and bringing people back to Cambodia to see the situation for themselves .

AW: What would you say to people who believe that banning landmines is unrealistic because they are a cheap and effective weapons during time of war?

LU: They really don’t have great military utility. A lot of countries have given them up. They are cheap, but once in the ground it costs $500 to $1,000 to get a mine out, which cost $3. Therefore, it’s not cheap or effective; in the long run, it’s very expensive. Decades after the war is over, people are still struggling to build their lives — they’re having a hard time surviving in peace years after the war. Groups all over the world have seen the ineffectiveness of landmines from different countries, from military people, to doctors, to students.

AW: In Cambodia, where were these landmines manufactured?

LU: Cambodia got a lot of the landmines from China during the war. But countries that still produce landmines include Vietnam, India, Pakistan, South and North Korea. Right now, countries like Angola and Sierra Leone, because of the ongoing war, still continue to put landmines in the ground.

AW: Are there any efforts to get these countries that are manufacturing landmines to assist in taking these landmine out?

LU: There’s an international treaty to ban landmines, which has been signed by over a 136 countries. It’s been signed by most of our allies, including most of our NATO allies and most of our friends in Africa. The countries that haven’t sign the treaty are India, Pakistan, China, Russia, North and South Korea, and the United States. So it’s been hard for us in the United States to put pressure on these countries. The treaty to ban landmines also has a provision that the countries stop manufacturing them, stop producing them, help with the removal of landmines, and help with victim assistance. Even China and Russia had said they’ll consider the treaty, and we really think they will sign once the United States takes that first step.

AW: Are landmines found in certain areas of a country where people can avoid them?

LU: A lot of the mines are dropped from the air from airplanes. And sometimes, especially in Asia, we have a lot of natural disasters. We get a lot of floods, a lot of rains. The mines shift and get carried to different places. What was a landmine field last year may not be a landmine field this year.

AW: How do landmines affect families and the larger society?

LU: Landmines don’t hurt just the people who step on them. They hurt the whole society and the economy. If a father steps on a landmine, a lot of times the family has no way of earning income. The father is out of a job, or is in the hospital. The kids have to go out and try to make money by collecting firewood, or going to the trash heap to find scrap metal to sell.

If a mother steps on a landmine, sometimes the husband brings in another wife to take care of the kids, or sometimes the husband will take the kids and leave.

AW: So landminds are not only a health issue, but a social and economic issue as well?

LU: It dismantled the whole society, from its economy, to religion, to psychology, to the environment. They can’t even farm. Since they can’t farm, conflict in the home is much higher.

Psychologically, every time you hear of someone stepping on a mine, you’re reliving the war’s past. I went through the war, and there are certain triggers that will bring me back, like lack of food when I’m really hungry. The color red really does a number on me; sometimes it’s sounds of fireworks. Or, if the plane is flying too low, it brings me right back to the war. And for people who step on it, it’s the war again.

In regard to religion, a lot of Cambodians are farmers and a lot of our deities are land and river based. Now the land is the enemy — where can they go? There is no sanctuary. They’ve dismantled the whole society.

AW: So there is a fear to go back to the land?

LU: Oh, I’m very fearful. I mean as a tourist, I’m afraid. My siblings are afraid. We have over 40,000 amputees. One out of every 242 people in Cambodia are amputees.

AW: When people think of Cambodia, they think of the Khmer Rouge and the “Killing Fields”, but it seems like there are new issues that need to be addressed, which the general public is unaware of.

LU: Absolutely. The country is very hopeful right now. It’s beautiful. Many more tourists are going in. Movies are going in to shoot in Cambodia. The big movie that was shot in Cambodia this year was Tomb Raiders. It’s starting to be safe again, it’s starting to be beautiful again, but for the indigenous people it’s a slow process. What we have done regarding landmines has worked. Instead of 500 people a month stepping on landmines, right now it’s 50 to a 100 people, depending if it’s rainy season or not. Our work is achieving results but it’s still slow in coming.

AW: I hear you’re also involved in bringing people in the Pol Pot regime to justice.

LU: I’m doing a bit of research here and there. But I’m trying to stay as nonpolitical as I can. We all have family in Cambodia, you just have to be careful. I do assist people but I’m not going to take a front role in that. It’ll just be too dangerous for my family and myself. [But] I think people in the central committee should most definitely be held accountable.

AW: Are those who were recruited as child soldiers feeling guilty now that they are old enough to understand more completely the consequences of their actions?

LU: I definitely think there are a lot of people feeling guilty about it. Thankfully, I was so young. I was never in the frontlines. But I know people who were in the frontline and they can’t talk about it … I know these people came to the United States and now they are good productive citizens, but if people found out about their past, they would be attacked. So their whole livelihood, their whole safe existence would be threatened. There is not one of us, who went through the war, who went through what we did, who didn’t compromise something. No one came out of this experience intact. I stole; I beat up people; we stole food from people who were weak. There is a lot of guilt in that. But I wrote a book about that so if they are going to attack me — which they have — what am I going to do about it?

Most Heavily-Mined Countries
Country	Landmines per Square Mile	Estimated Total Landmines
Bosnia & Herzegovina	152	3,000,000
Cambodia	143	10,000,000
Croatia	137	3,000,000
Egypt	60	23,000,000
Iraq	59	10,000,000
Afghanistan	40	10,000,000
Angola	31	15,000,000
Iran	25	16,000,000
Rwanda	25	250,000
Note: There is too little information about some countries. such as Vietnam, to include them in the estimates. Source: U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs.