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Myanmar's 'human
minesweepers'
By Richard S Ehrlich
BANGKOK - Myanmar's military is killing people
by forcing them to walk across minefields to reveal
where explosives are buried, and Myanmar rebels are
buying US landmines on the black market, causing death
and injury to soldiers and civilians, a Landmine Monitor
researcher said.
Landmine Monitor is an
initiative of the International Campaign to Ban
Landmines, which is a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize
co-laureate.
"Atrocity demining is the use of
human beings to remove landmines," said Yeshua
Moser-Puangsuwan, an American who is Landmine Monitor's
researcher on Myanmar. "More and more people are being
taken for forced demining who are prisoners" in Myanmar,
Moser-Puangsuwan said in a taped interview.
"In
a suspected mine area, they [the regime] will take these
people and they will march them ahead of military units
to trigger any mines that may be there, intentionally to
detonate any mines that may be there," he said. "Up to
70 percent of these people die during their military
service. They can die being caught in the crossfire,
they can die due to malnutrition and malaria, but they
are also being killed by landmines, by being casualties
simply in a war zone but also as human mine sweepers,"
he said.
London-based Amnesty International,
Washington-based Human Rights Watch and other groups
have documented "human minesweepers" dating back to
1985, he said.
Asked about the evidence,
Moser-Puangsuwan, who is based in Thailand, replied: "It
is mostly reports from people who have escaped portering
[for the military] and have crossed the border into this
country, because they were fleeing that type of
service."
Landmine Monitor's researcher said,
"The number of [death or injury] cases we can verify in
a year would be only two or three, but consistently we
have been able to specifically say in these cases, 'We
know it is happening.' We get allegations of many more."
Myanmar is continental Southeast Asia's biggest
country geographically. It consistently denies all
allegations of atrocities and human-rights violations.
The secretive, xenophobic regime forbids independent
verification of claims made victims, dissidents and
investigators, but Myanmar is widely considered to be
one of the world's worst violators of human rights.
Myanmar's military government refuses to
recognize a 1990 landslide election victory by the
National League for Democracy (NLD) party, led by Aung
San Suu Kyi, who is the world's most famous political
prisoner. The regime is also fighting a handful of
minority ethnic guerrillas who demand autonomy or
independence for the scattered regions where they live.
Some of these rebels also illegally produce heroin and
methamphetamines, which are smuggled to North America,
Europe and elsewhere.
The military and rebels
bury landmines in mountainous jungles as defensive and
offensive weapons, making the countryside treacherous
for everyone, including civilians, the Landmine Monitor
researcher said. Every few months, a Landmine Monitor
researcher goes to Myanmar to investigate and ask the
regime to ban the use of landmines or at least begin
demining.
"In the last eight years, I've
probably gone there about 20 times. I will be there for
a week or two weeks and during that time I will meet
people in various ministries, but also within UN
agencies, international non-governmental organizations
and businesses," Moser-Puangsuwan said.
Landmine
injuries are widespread, he said.
"You'll see a
beggar and you ask him, 'What happened?' and he will
give you the [gesture] sign of something exploding. If
you look at their injury, it is the type you find from a
mine injury. You'll see shrapnel in the opposite limb
that is still there."
US President George W Bush
recently tightened economic sanctions on Myanmar to
emphasize his country's demand that the military step
down, release Suu Kyi from detention, and allow her NLD
to rule. Washington, however, is "neutral and
indifferent" to the use of landmines in Myanmar,
Moser-Puangsuwan said.
"They have the major
[economic] sanctions on that country but that really
doesn't affect the landmine problem," he said. "I would
like him [Bush] to have the moral authority to speak on
the matter" by signing the international Mine Ban Treaty
and stop using landmines on the Korean Peninsula,
Moser-Puangsuwan said.
In 1975, when the United
States lost its wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the
US military's legacy of death and destruction
inadvertently spread because it had left a huge quantity
of landmines.
"Since they are not needed for
warfare in Cambodia and Vietnam any longer, they are
being sold on the black market and predominately they go
to Burma," the Landmine Monitor researcher said, using
Myanmar's old name, officially changed by the ruling
junta in 1989.
"You will find US-made landmines
in Burma," he said, including M-14, M-16 and M-18 mines,
mostly used by Myanmar's rebels. "The M-16 is a horrific
mine. It is what we call a 'bounding mine'. It has a
small charge that blows the mine out of the ground until
it is around chest-height, at which point it has an
extremely high explosive charge in it, and it sends out
lethal shrapnel over an extremely broad area,"
Moser-Puangsuwan said. "It is made to wipe out a whole
platoon of soldiers.
"The M-18 is commonly known
as a claymore. It is a directional mine. Originally it
was designed for perimeter defense around military bases
and was triggered only by a guard. Now these things can
be fitted with other fuses and they can be triggered by
a victim. In that configuration, they are banned by the
Mine Ban Treaty. These things are used offensively in
Burma ... they are not used as they were originally
designed to be used," he said.
Guerrillas using
landmines include the Karen tribe, who are often helped
by US and other foreign aid groups because many Karen
are Baptist and dwell along Myanmar's eastern border
close to Thailand, within easy access to the outside
world.
"The Karen are a major mine user. They
use them also indiscriminately," Moser-Puangsuwan said.
"The Karen National Liberation Army is the armed wing of
the Karen National Union, which is a political
organization. They explain to us consistently that the
mines they lay do not harm civilians, that they tell
everybody in a village where they have laid the mines,
and therefore there are no [civilian] casualties.
"However, with the [civilian] landmine survivors
that we have interviewed ... never once did any of them
ever say that they were warned by a [rebel] soldier
where the mines were. There are some areas of Burma,
specifically in the border areas of Karen and Karenni
states close to the Thai border, that the landmine
situation is reaching the saturation point of some of
the worst parts of Cambodia," he said.
Myanmar's
government, meanwhile, is manufacturing new landmines,
thanks to initial assistance from its closest ally,
China.
"We believe the Chinese sold the machines
and were involved in technical assistance," starting
around 1995, enabling Myanmar to make landmines.
The International Campaign to Ban Landmines
issued its latest global "Landmine Monitor Report 2003"
last Tuesday.
The organization and its
affiliates also scheduled 11 days of meetings, news
conferences and other events in Thailand to publicize
the report and gather representatives from nations that
signed the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa
Convention.
Their schedule includes a
demonstration of demining in Thailand, discussions with
the International Campaign to Ban Landmines' ambassador,
Jody Williams, and briefings with landmine survivors,
diplomats, Thai government officials and others at the
United Nations headquarters in Bangkok from Monday to
Friday this week.
(Copyright 2003 Richard S
Ehrlich.)
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