RIGHTS-BURMA: Junta Turns Blind Eye to Rising Landmine Casualties

• by Marwaan Macan-Markar (bangkok)
• Thursday, December 11, 2008
• Inter Press Service

Yet the figure of 438 new mine casualties in 2007 in the South-east Asian country is a conservative estimate, says a co-author of the ‘Landmine Monitors Report (LMR) - 2008’.

These documented landmine explosions resulted in 47 deaths, 338 people injured and ‘’53 unknown,’’ revealed the LMR, which is an annual assessment brought out for the past decade to build up global pressure to ban landmines. The report adds weight to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, signed or ratified by 156 countries.

The toll, however, was limited to ‘’civilian casualties,’’ based on what the report’s researchers gathered from media accounts and information from humanitarian and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the country.

‘’The Burmese government doesn’t make public the list of combat casualties... We have almost nothing on soldiers injured from landmine explosions,’’ revealed co-author Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan during this week’s launch of the annual report in the Thai capital.

A similar cloak of secrecy confronted researchers trying to get casualty figures from ethnic rebel groups in Burma, or Myanmar, who also use the antipersonnel mine as a weapon in their separatist war.

‘’Myanmar has moved up a notch. For the first time it has overtaken the casualties in Cambodia,’’ added Moser-Puangsuwan. ‘’It comes third after Afghanistan and Columbia globally.’’

According to LMR figures on Burma, there were 132 new casualties reported in 2004, 231 in 2005, 243 in 2006 and 438 in 2007. Cambodia, by contrast, had 352 new mine victims in 2007, a decrease of 22 percent from 2006, when the figure was 450, and a dramatic drop from 2005, when there were 875 new casualties.

Mines in Cambodia are a deadly legacy of the nearly two-decade-long war and internal conflict that began in the 1970s. The unexploded ordnance in Cambodia were the work of many armies, including the United Sates, during its war in Indo-China, and the Vietnamese troops, when it invaded Cambodia to drive out the ruthless Khmer Rouge regime.

In Burma, on the other hand, mines are still actively used by both the ‘Tatmadaw’, as the military is called, and the many ethnic rebel armies, ranging from the Karen National Liberation Army , the Karenni Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army to the Shan Sate Army-South and the United Wa State Army.

‘’Burma is the one country that has consistently used landmines on a widespread bases; it is the only one doing so globally,’’ says Moser-Puangsuwan. ‘’The military industry of Myanmar producers at least three types of mines. One is a plastic mine, which is very difficult to detect, and can remove an arm or a leg.’’

While 10 of the country’s 14 states and divisions are contaminated with mines, the most heavily mined areas are close to its borders, such as the eastern one with Thailand, which are regions that are home to the ethnic minorities.

'’The junta uses landmines to secure and defend its military bases close to the border and as a weapon to attack the ethnic rebel groups,’’ says Win Min, a Burmese national security expert teaching in a northern Thai university.

‘’The mines are a very important as weapons for the Burmese army,’’ he added during a telephone interview. ‘’But the problem is that most of the mines hit civilians, not the rebels. And the junta does not have a proper mapping system, so when the troops move on, they leave the mines behind.’’

Such mine warfare has taken a toll on the Burmese troops, too, Win Min confirmed. ‘’There are a lot of Burmese soldiers who are victims. You see many amputees in the military hospitals.’’

Some of the civilian casualties are being aided by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) through its Hpa-an orthopaedic centre, set up in 2003 in the Karen State, in south-east Burma. ‘’We treat 600 people a year. Most of those being helped with our prosthetic services are adults,’’ Djorde Drndarski, deputy head of the ICRC delegation, said in a telephone interview from Rangoon.

This service of artificial limbs by the global humanitarian agency comes after the victims have been treated for their blast injuries at local hospitals, added Drndarski. ‘’The persons have to be first cared for at the hospitals. We take over after that. There is also an outreach programme we run with our partner, the Myanmar Red Cross Society.’’

It is in this region, in fact, that Human Rights Watch revealed that mines are being used by the junta to ‘’kill, maim and starve civilians’’ from the ethnic minorities. Researchers for the New York-based global rights lobby painted a grim picture, where the Tatmadaw have been laying landmines ‘’in front of houses, around rice fields, and along trails leading to fields in order to deter civilians from harvesting their crops’’.

And the likelihood of the junta changing course and joining the other countries in ratifying the 1997 international treaty appears remote. In addition to ignoring the treaty, the regime has also refused to open its doors for international humanitarian assistance to help landmine victims -- unlike Cambodia which drew 30.8 million US dollars for mine action funding in 2007.

Burma also stands apart from two other neighbours, Laos and Vietnam, that has still to endorse the treaty but have responded to the global anti-mine movement positively. The junta has stayed away from international meetings dealing with the global landmine ban and has also abstained from voting at the U.N. General Assembly.

‘’The Myanmar government does not want to admit that there is a problem,’’ says Alfredo Lubang, regional representative, of Nonviolence International, a global NGO. ‘’There is no systematic mine-risk education programme.’’

Consequently, the international anti-landmine movement ‘’has established a very special campaign for Burma,’’ he told IPS. ‘’It is the Halt Mine Use in Burma Campaign; no other country has been targeted like this.’’

© Inter Press Service (2008) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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