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Cambodia's scars of war linger

As country clears land of unexploded munitions, many question refusal to ban cluster bombs
Cambodia's scars of war linger

Landmine victim Srey Sovath grows lettuce and rice for sale on his farm in Rattanak Mondol. (Photo by Abby Seiff)

Published: September 30, 2015 04:48 AM GMT
Updated: September 29, 2015 10:31 PM GMT

Decades after the accident, Chaom Sor moves gracefully on his prosthetics. Today, though, he's staying in the office. His stumps are sore — they ache after too many days in a row bouncing on rough dirt roads trying to convince recent landmine victims they will be okay.

In spite of a large-scale clearance over the past 20 years, Cambodia remains littered with explosive remnants of war. There are always new casualties for Sor to convince that they can recover; can go on to lead full and healthy lives.

"Everyone who steps on a landmine feels the same. Your heart is broken and you think you'll never be able to do things again," says Sor, who works as a disabilities outreach leader with the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang.

"We think short," he says, explaining that depression and even suicide attempts are not uncommon. "It's the same feeling I encounter in all victims today … [I try to show] you can walk, you can have a normal life."

In 1988, when he was 21, Sor stepped on a landmine in an ordnance-riddled area of Battambang province. The situation was not unusual — that day alone, two other soldiers on his team sustained landmine injuries. Sor's unit was composed mainly of soldiers like him, boys handed guns and told they would be arrested if they did not fight.

The low-ranking Khmer Rouge guerrillas on the opposite side were mostly the same. For much of the 1980s, the boys on both sides had been digging up the earth, laying out landmines, sowing more seeds of destruction into the Cambodian soil.

A sign on the grounds of Our Lady of the Assumption Parish in Battambang calls for Cambodia to sign the cluster munitions ban treaty. (Photo by Abby Seiff)

 

The landmines were just the latest addition.

Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Cambodia. Immediate death toll estimates run anywhere from 50,000 to 800,000 but the ordnance that did not explode left no less of a mark.

Cluster bombs opened to embed tiny submunitions into the dirt. Rockets wended their way below ground. Mortars stayed unexploded. Grenades did not detonate. Missiles failed to discharge. Bombs — big ones, quarter-of-a-ton ones — went deep into the ground and stayed there. And underfoot they remained, marking tens of thousands more for injury and death in the coming years.

When Sor unearthed the landmine with his body, such accidents were "very, very common." The team was securing land, and he was on the frontline. Since 1979, more than 64,500 Cambodians have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance, or UXO, and landmines. The number of casualties each year has been dropping steadily since regular recording began in 1996 (when 12 people were maimed each day) but scores still fall victim every year.

"You can see these devices continue to kill and wound people. One of the main issues is the economic impact — it's one of the biggest [obstacles] for Cambodia to recover from the war and moving to a developed economy," said Heng Ratana, director-general of the Cambodian Mine Action Center.

Casualties have always been highest throughout the north and northwest of the country, where fighting between government forces and the Khmer Rouge continued through the 1990s. In the outreach office at the prefecture, a huge dated map detailing contaminated areas hangs on the wall. The northwest is an angry constellation of dots representing mined areas.

Outreach workers from the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang make daily visits to people living with disabilities in rural areas. (Photo by Abby Seiff) 

 

Over the years since the map was printed, Cambodia has made significant headway in erasing those dots. Last year, there were 154 casualties compared with 3,047 in 1996, and thousands of hectares of land are each year cleared of landmines and released for public use. About US$30 million — mostly from foreign aid agencies and international NGOs — is spent annually on demining and the country is routinely lauded for its progress.

But progress on some fronts has been met with maddening lags on others. Clearance work has moved slower than expected, and the extent of the problem is still not fully known. More troubling to advocates has been Cambodia's refusal to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions — a treaty banning the use of such munitions and setting out timelines for clearance.

According to the 2015 Cluster Munition Monitor, released this month, Cambodia has identified an estimated 217 square kilometers of land believed to contain unexploded cluster bomblets. That figure represents a significant proportion of the roughly 1,000 square kilometers of overall contaminated land.

In early September, delegates from around the globe gathered in Croatia to review progress in the last five years since the cluster munitions ban came into place. But Cambodia has continued to insist it will not consider joining the ban until its neighbors Vietnam and Thailand do so, and its reasoning has frustrated activists and victims alike.

"Before the treaty, the Cambodian government said they [would be] the first to ban cluster munitions but until today Cambodia still stalls," said Tun Channareth, a prominent campaigner with Jesuit Refugee Service Cambodia.

Channareth, who is himself a landmine victim, said he was confounded by the country's refusal to sign.

Many of the residents of Rattanak Mondol have lost limbs to landmines and UXO. Set up by the prefecture, which runs development projects across the northwest, the village is one of two planned communities for those with nowhere else to turn.

"I was very poor before. Now I have some support and can go forward. But there's still many others who have a lot of trouble," said Srey Sovath, who was a teenage soldier on patrol when he stepped on a landmine planted by the Khmer Rouge.

"Here, there are many victims. This area is a landmine area and there's so many injured." 

In the face of such ubiquitous injuries, Sor is stunned by the pushback on the cluster ban.

"People who produce bombs and cluster munitions are people who are producing goods that will kill people," he says. "I don't understand why the government won't sign."

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