Burma alone in using landmines in Southeast Asia
By Teena Gill (Inter Press Service)
CHIANG MAI - Phe Gai Hte was so intent to find food that he failed to notice a device embedded in the soil as he walked back to his deserted village in eastern Myanmar. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground and in great pain. But what he saw horrified him - where his left leg used to be was a mere piece of bone, with some flesh hanging loosely around it.
That happened just months ago. Today, Phe Gai Hte is still struggling to recover from his traumatic and violent encounter with one of the anti-personnel landmines that dot most of Myanmar.
As more and more countries worldwide agree to ban the manufacture and sale of landmines, the Myanmar military remains the sole armed force in Southeast Asia using the destructive and inhumane devices, and one of only three in the whole of Asia, according to a recently released Landmine Monitor report.
The Landmine Monitor is produced by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Its latest report says that 10 out of Myanmar's 14 states and divisions are mined, and that the country had some 1,500 landmine victims in 1999 alone. In the Karen state, where Phe Gai Hte is from, one person is either injured or killed by a landmine every day.
Sam Kalyani, an activist with the Chiang Mai-based organization Images Asia, says: ''It is difficult to estimate what the latest figures of landmine victims are (in Myanmar). Most are treated by mobile medical teams going in from the Thai side of the border, or admitted to Thai hospitals. But they are very visible.''
In truth, the devastation caused by such mines in Myanmar is now estimated to be the highest in Southeast Asia, surpassing even Cambodia, where mines planted by all the factions involved in the civil war there made it one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. As of 1997, Cambodia was estimated to have some 10 million landmines.
While other weapons can be targeted specifically at an enemy, landmines are obviously less discriminate and are usually left to continue to wreak havoc even after an armed conflict has ended. Every year, some 25,000 civilians - 32 percent of them children - across the globe are killed, wounded, or maimed by landmines. Many more are driven from their homes and fields after these are found to contain mines.
Myanmar itself makes landmines, but mines from a number of other nations such as China, Israel, Russia and the United States have also been found in the country. Experts say these could have been purchased by either Myanmar's military junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), or the various ethnic armies fighting Yangon. There are about a dozen armed resistance groups battling with the military regime, including ethnic minority groups from the Shan, Karen and Karenni states in the east of Myanmar, and Chin and Arakan states in the west.
Many of those killed or maimed by landmines, however, are civilians like Phe Gai Hte. Thei San of the All Myanmar Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), an exiled group of pro-democracy student activists, says: ''The reason casualties are so high today is because of a change in tactic by the Myamar army. They want to make sure all insurgency areas are cleared of local people, including those hiding in forests, so they are heavily mining all these areas.''
Working in Karen state, Thei San says that this new method came into force only last November.
Myanmar is among those believed to have the largest concentrations of landmines in the world today, along with Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. In Southeast Asia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand have already either signed or ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, which came into force in March 1999.
But while the growing international outcry over landmines has helped lead to the decline in the production and sale of the deadly devices, there are still some 85 to 110 million uncleared mines in about 60 countries around the world. About 250 million mines are also known to be in the arsenals of 105 countries.
Of the three main types of mines in use across the world, the Myamar junta is known to produce two. These are modeled after the Chinese Type 58 blast mine and the Chinese Type 59 stake-mounted fragmentation mine. The fragmentation mine is designed just for the purpose of killing and is effective up to 50 meters from the site of detonation. The more common blast mine does not necessarily result in fatalities when activated, but it certainly maims. Experts estimate that up to 50 percent of those who step on landmines die as a result of the impact or from loss of blood and infection.
The United Nations has noted that while it takes only between US$3 and $11 to make a landmine, removing one can cost anywhere from $300 to $1,000.
In Myanmar, Sam Kalyani says, the most important issue concerning landmines is ''rehabilitation. This could take another 20 to 30 years if the conflict continues''.
Another activist working along the Thai-Myanmar border adds, ''Even when the civil war in Myanmar ends, and even if there is democracy in Myanmar, this will still be a pressing issue. The impact will be felt for many, many years.''