| Home > South-East Asia >> Burma | |
Burmese still walking on deadly ground
Sydney Morning Herald - September 5, 2011
"Landmines are not good but we have to use them to protect ourselves from the Burmese army," says 20-year-old Mr Maungpu, a former soldier of the Karen National Liberation Army, an armed group that has been fighting for autonomy in Burma for 55 years.
Trained to defuse landmines, Mr Maungpu was guarding his village in 2009 when he reached down to pick up what looked like one. He regained consciousness in a Karen army field hospital blind and missing half of his two arms.
Sixteen grossly disfigured former Karen soldiers grow vegetables and make handicrafts to survive in Mae Hla camp C, near the Thai border town of Mae Sot, 250 kilometres north-west of Bangkok. Aged between 13 and 66, most are blind and do not have arms or legs.
As they suffer, Burma continues to lay landmines, the only government in the world that still does, despite a 2009 United Nations vote that banned their use worldwide, according to the annual Landmine Monitor published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
The report says armed ethnic groups fighting the Burmese along the border are also laying the deadly explosives in a conflict that has escalated in recent months.
Mr Maungpu says he had no choice but to become a village guard, exposing himself to the risk of the hidden explosives. "My father was killed by the Burmese army in 2004," he says. "They had come to the village looking for porters... he resisted and they shot him."
Mr Maungpu was left to care for his mother. "I just wanted to help my village," he says.
Saw Klowsay, 43, lost his right leg just below the knee when in 2008 he and other Karen soldiers were guarding the Mae Hla camp, fearing an attack from Burmese soldiers.
As he stepped over a fallen tree, an explosion hurled him into the air. "Landmines are bad... sure, we used them as well, but mostly to protect ourselves from the Burmese army," he says.
The Mae Hla camp's handicapped unit has received some help from international donors, including a church group in Australia, since it was founded in 2000.But the funding is due to run out next year.
There are also fears among an estimated 140,000 Burmese refugees living in camps along the border that the Thai government will soon force them to return to Burma.
"It's hard because people are still being killed and maimed by landmines in the border areas," says Ler Lay Kler, a volunteer who helps look after the camp's landmine victims.
The latest was a 66-year-old rubber plantation owner who stepped on a landmine and was killed instantly in Pattani last week.
The Landmine Monitor says armed groups are still laying landmines in five other countries – Afghanistan, Colombia, India, Pakistan and Yemen – the lowest number since 1999. (With David Longstreath)
See also:
 |