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Burma: A Landmine Tragedy
Irrawaddy - November 13, 2009
Saw Yan Naing – Ta Maw Pu, an ethnic Karen, fled with his mother and five sisters from his village in Taungoon District in Pegu Division in Eastern Burma after his father was killed by junta troops on Dec.26 in 2004.
"I hate the Burmese regime troops because they killed my father. I took revenge on them by planting landmines where their troops patrolled," he said.
He was 17 years old when he lost both eyes and hands trying to remove a landmine he had planted himself.
Staying in Ei Tu Hta, a temporary camp in Papun district on the west bank of the Salween River border with Thailand's Mae Hong Son Province, Ta Maw Pu now depends entirely on his siblings for getting around, eating and keeping clean.
"My life feels over because of that mine. But for the Burmese military regime who killed my father, I wouldn't ever have touched one," he said.
Saw Naing Naing, 23, another young Karen man who lost his right eye as well as both hands in a landmine explosion, said, "Landmine injures are different from gunshot wounds. If we don't die, we are disabled, but it is as if a part of us has died. I hate landmines. They ruined my life," he said.
Ta Maw Pu and Saw Naing Naing are among thousands of landmine victims in Burma, a country the Landmine Monitor Report 2009 describes as "a landmine tragedy."
Released on Thursday, the report says Burma "has remained outside global efforts to ban antipersonnel mines and is the only country in which antipersonnel landmines have been used on a widespread basis, consistently, since 1999."
Burma so far is not among 156 nations that are signatories to the 1997 Landmine Ban Treaty.
In 2008, Burma had the third highest casualty rate due to antipersonnel mines in the world, and 1 in every 8 landmine victims was from Burma, which accounts for 30 percent of global military casualties caused by antipersonnel mines, according to the Landmine Monitor.
Landmine Monitor identified 2,325 casualties (175 killed, 2002 injured, and 148 unknown) from 1999 to 2008. Reported casualties in 2008 were 721, an increase from the 438 casualties the Landmine Monitor recorded in 2007.
Due to the difficulties of reporting from conflict areas, however, the figures are expected to be much worse.
The Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates that as many as 1,500 Burmese may be injured or killed by landmines yearly.
The UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Burma finds the junta army's reported use of ethnic minority civilians as human minesweepers to clear brush and porter in mine hazard areas "particularly worrying."
The Landmine Monitor calls this use of civilians "atrocity demining."
Suthikiet Sopanik, who is secretary of the Thailand Campaign to Ban Landmines said: "During a war, combatants will use whatever they can to kill and maim each other. But, after the battle is over and the troops have withdrawn, it is the civilians, the cattle and wildlife who suffer from the mines."
The report states that both Burmese government troops and ethnic armed groups have used antipersonnel mines consistently throughout the long-running civil war and continued using them through 2008 and 2009.
Karen State and Pegu division – where Burmese government and rebel Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) troops have been fighting for decades – contain the most heavily mine-affected areas.
Hla Ngwe, joint secretary 1 of the Karen National Union, the political wing of the KNLA, said landmines are very useful weapons because their troops are greatly outnumbered by Burmese junta forces.
Despite the heavy use of landmines, no humanitarian mine clearance programs exist within the country, the Landmine Monitor said.
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