Kiwi
soldiers help UN demining
New Zealand Army engineer officer Major John Flanagan has been appointed
to a new United Nations mission to map out a demining programme in
Kosovo. He has been Desk Officer with the UN Demining Unit, Department
of Peacekeeping Operations, New York since May 1997, and before that
worked with the NZ UN Transitional Authority Cambodia as the Mine
Plan Liaison Officer in 1992. (Army News)
"Red (minefields) to green (cleared) the best feeling" is an illustrated
double-spread article in the Army News issue of 8 June 1999,
written by Lt-Colonel John Armstrong who has been Chief Technical
Adviser to the United Nations ADP (Accelerated Demining Programme)
in Mozambique. It shows deminers in action and documents the successes
of the ADP.
At the first meeting of State Parties to the Ottawa Convention in
Maputo in May, Mozambique President Chissano singled out the New Zealand
Army's support to mine action in Mozambique as a shining example of
what can be achieved through genuine partnership between developed
and developing countries at grass roots level. [Mozambique is the
world's 3rd-poorest country.]
Food convoys
in Angola blocked by new-style mines
The London Times has reported on a new kind of landmine, designed
to harm mine clearers, that is complicating demining efforts and hampering
food delivery in Angola. Other experimental work investigates ground-penetrating
radar and chemical sniffers which are sensitive to minute traces of
the explosives used in mines.
The new mines explode when they are exposed to light or when they
pick up signals from mine detectors. "You could be 20 yards away from
the mine and set it off with a metal detector," said Colin King, a
mine clearance consultant. He said "sheer bloody-mindedness" is the
only explanation for such devices. They do note, though, that they
need a further $400,000 to be able to appoint a small team to work
full-time on the project.
Tim Carstairs of the Mines Advisory Group says the devices are "specifically
designed to kill people like our volunteers, who are trying to help
communities by getting rid of landmines." Such devices designed to
harm or injure mine clearers are not specifically prohibited by the
1997 Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel mines.
Angola has more than 70,000 amputees resulting from mine injuries,
and some 15 million mines are scattered in the soil, trees, roads
and bushes in Angola. Since fighting resumed between the UNITA rebels
and government soldiers, even more mines have been placed, particularly
in central farming regions. (London Times, 4 July)
Landmines
kill nine in Egypt this year
Landmine explosions in Egypt have so far this year killed nine people
and wounded 11, including two German tourists, according to the Landmine
Struggle Centre (LSC), a Cairo-based NGO.
Some 21.8 million mines are believed to lie in the sands of Egypt,
including 16.7 million in the Western Desert and 5.1 million in the
Eastern Desert and Sinai peninsula, a deadly legacy from World War
2 and wars with Israel. The LSC estimates that 1.2 million landmines
have been removed from the Sinai desert since 1995.
Egypt has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty, partly because it feels
Western powers have failed to provide significant help in clearing
mines laid by their armies in the desert battles of World War 2. (Reuters/Cairo)
Kosovo's mines
will remain for years
Clearing the mines, booby-traps and unexploded ordnance from Kosovo
will take years, according to a US expert. Donald Steinberg, US special
representative for global humanitarian demining, said: "Regrettably,
we estimate that mines will be an everyday fact in life of the Kosovar
people for as many as three to five years." One British and six US
demining teams are already working in Kosovo. Since NATO's bombing
campaign ended, about two dozen people, some of them peacekeepers,
have been victims of landmines Most mines were laid by Serbian military
and paramilitary personnel, but some may have been planted by the
Kosovo Liberation Army Traditional mine-clearing equipment cannot
be used in much of Kosovo because the terrain is too rough. In addition,
some of the Serbian mines are programmed to detonate when exposed
to light and could blow up the mine-clearing tanks that uncover them.
The United Nations has opened a Mine Action Center in Pristina, the
Kosovar capital. (Reuters/Central Europe Online,
and Berlin taz)
Nobel Laureate
who fought land mine use visits Kosovo's victims
Jody Williams saw sights on Wednesday that she won the Nobel Peace
Prize for trying to erase: vacant-eyed patients whose legs were blown
off by landmines. "I was going home, and I stepped on a mine," Janute
Halili said, too weak or too stunned to say more nearly two months
after his right leg was ruined.
There will be many more like Halili coming to Pristina's hospital,
Williams predicted. As refugees stream back into Kosovo, it's inevitable
that some will become victims of a war that has ended. Williams, who
shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with the International Campaign
to Ban Land Mines for their work pushing for an international anti-mines
treaty, praised UN agencies for their efforts to educate Kosovo refugees
about the dangers they are coming back to. But she said the warnings
can't guarantee safety.
The more victims, the more trauma for a hospital already near the
breaking point. Patients endure their days in shabby rooms crammed
with up to six beds, gazing at flaking walls and broken mirrors. Drugs
were either stolen or destroyed in June when many Serb doctors left
the hospital in the wave of Serbs fleeing Kosovo, said Dr Arben Grazhdan,
head of the orthopedics ward where mine victims are treated. The staff
of only five doctors is struggling to care for the ward's 65 patients,
said another doctor, Merkur Dobroshi. Nonetheless, the patients are
lucky to be alive, said Grazhdan. Many were severely malnourished
and weak because they had been in hiding before being wounded. "They
have been months in the forest," he said. (AP,
from Pristina, Yugoslavia)
Soccer fines
for mine victims
Fines for red and yellow cards at next year's European soccer championships
will be given to young victims of land mines, the tournament's director
said on Tuesday. "All the fines will be put into a fund for children
who are victims of anti-personnel mines," Belgian Alain Courtois told
a news briefing. "It shows it's not only sport that matters . . .
these children will never be able to play soccer again," he told Reuters
on the joint initiative of UEFA, Europe's governing soccer body, and
Euro 2000. (Reuters/Brussels)
Children in
Laos clear mines for money
Desperate to raise money for their families, many Laotian children
are risking their lives by clearing landmines for payment. The Singapore
Straits Times reported that many children use "frying-pan" metal detectors
to uncover shrapnel and unexploded ordnance to sell for cash.
Medical officials say the practice is growing out of control, though
many accidents probably go unreported. "If people ever see a wounded
kid arriving [at a hospital], they never say he has been trying to
tamper with a bomb," said a nurse who worked near the Ho Chi Minh
Trail.
Despite the risks, the game has become a form of business and sport
for Laotian children. Since the Asian economic crisis hit the region,
"everyone hopes for just one thing: to bring back a little money for
the family," said one Laotian deminer. In many areas, children would
rather follow demining crews than go to school. Said one schoolteacher,
"To an extent, [the deminers] are their heroes." (Straits
Times, Singapore)
1 million
mines cleared from Afghanistan
At the beginning of July, the UN Mine Action Program in Afghanistan
has cleared 1 million landmines, announced the UN official heading
demining in the country. He said that international support is still
needed to continue clearing the estimated 312 square kilometres of
mined land in Afghanistan.
The demining programme, in co-operation with the World Health Organization,
has "initiated a program which will, for the first time, track all
civilian mine injuries throughout Afghanistan." (UN
Information Centre, Islamabad)
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News
briefs:
- To celebrate the start of last month's Zagreb Regional Conference
on Anti-Personnel Mines, the Croatian Army destroyed some
3,000 landmines. At the conference, Croatia urged the World
Bank to provide it with loans for the clearance of more than
one million landmines deployed in the country during the civil
war in the early 1990s.
- The 1999 Great Taipei Duck Race will be held in Taipei,
Taiwan, on 8 August to raise funds for landmine victims.
- Canada is supporting Norway's People's Aid-sponsored program
to rid Sarajevo Canton of landmines within four years. The
programme is part of a larger, internationally-supported plan
to facilitate the return of 50,000 former residents of the
region to their homes. Funding will help purchase necessary
mechanical mine clearance equipment and operate a small platoon
of 25 deminers.
- CALM has recently sent a strong letter to H E Josiah H
Beeman, Ambassador for the United States of America in New
Zealand, calling on the United States to sign the Mine Ban
Treaty and detailing the flaws in the US arguments for delaying
signing until 2006. Click here
to read it
- There are an estimated 15 million unexploded landmines in
southern Africa, and 250,000 to 300,000 estimated mine victims.
(from the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian).
- Russia is sending sniffer dogs, some of which already worked
in Bosnia-Herzegovina, to detect mines in Kosovo.
- The British Government has detected five minefields planted
by Argentine troops in the Malvinas [Falkland] Islands during
the war of 1982. It is estimated that there are over 20,000
anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, which are particularly
dangerous to remove because of the soft, unstable soil in
the islands. (from La Nacion, Buenos Aires)
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Turkey says
PKK landmines are mostly Italian
The majority of the thousands of landmines seized by Turkish authorities
from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) in the last five years were of
Italian origin.
The Italian mines got into the Kurds' hands via Saddam Husayn's Iraq.
For example, the Valsella company, based in Brescia, got its fair
share of the huge volume of business generated by the Iran-Iraq war,
by supplying massive amounts of mines to Baghdad as early as 1980.
It obtained seven licences from the [Italian] Foreign Trade Ministry
over a four-year period, selling 153 billion lire's worth of arms
and ammunition. These figures appear in a detailed dossier published
by the Florence municipal authority, in which it is explained that
mines continued to be shipped throughout the second half of the eighties
thanks to a triangular arrangement with Singapore. "Valsella sent
the housings, while the Swedish firm Bofors delivered the explosive
material, and then Chartered Industries assembled the mines and got
them to Iraq," the dossier says.
The Italian companies at which Ankara is pointing the finger of accusation
either went bankrupt some time ago, or else they have ceased manufacturing
the banned devices - but the land mines are still sowing death and
destruction. (Il Giornale, Milan)
UNICEF taking
the landmine message to children
UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, is mounting an intensive
information campaign in Kosovo and neighbouring countries, warning
refugees about the dangers of landmines, using printed material, TV
and radio.
Some of the announcements are straightforward messages of things
people must do to protect themselves from landmines. Others use catchier
slogans such as: "You have survived the war, now survive the peace."
UNICEF is giving out many thousands of pamphlets and leaflets to
refugees returning to Kosovo and to those still in camps in Albania
and Macedonia, and posters have been put on trees and walls throughout
the area. The mine awareness campaign will have to continue for a
long time.
UNICEF is making a particular effort to teach children about the
dangers of landmines. Children respond well to plays, and UNICEF is
sending travelling theatre and drama groups to perform in refugee
camps and throughout Kosovo. Mine awareness lessons are being taught
in summer schools and other materials, such as comic books, are being
developed to get life-saving messages across.
