Landmines and Environment Scrapbook

This is a collection of links that I found, but have yet to put them on an "offical" page or don't fit on any page. The main purpose of this page is so I don't forget any links in my vast collection of Notepad files. Also, it's to give visitors an idea of the range of issues covered by the site.

• Mines and Hunger
• Mozambique -Kruger National Park
• Canaan Dog -Mine Detecting Dogs
• Caught in the Crossfire Gorillas in Rwanda
• Wildlife flourishes in Berlin's 'Death Strip'
• Sudan - grazing land lost to landmines
• Between Two Worlds - Documentary on the DMZ between North AND South Korea
• An elephant is killed by a bomb in Nepal
• In Chechnya fear of mines prevents people from feeding their livestock
• unexploded ordinances are used for fishing, destroying caral reefs
• Demining in France - enviromental concerns
• Plitvice Lakes
• In an article on the Falkland Islands
  "Until minefields made Stanley's beaches once more safe safe for nesting, penguinshad sought refuge in other islands."
  Source: (Hodgson,p. 409)

Environmental Justice

• Farmers Snub US; Tokyo Retaliates - Farmland lost to military bases and firing ranges
• Environmental Needs on Reservation Llands

News Clippings

Kenya Daily News

27TH FEBRUARY, 1996

UGANDA RE-OPENS HIGHWAY IN REBEL - HIT NATIONAL PARK

Ugandans security forces have re-opened the Kampala Arua highway following a two day closure to clear the 200 kilometre stretch through the national park of rebels and landmines, the Chief of Combat Operations in the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) Brigadier Joram Mugume has confirmed.

Rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) of Mr Joseph Kony, who stuck about a week ago from their southern Sudan bases, disrupted traffic along the Kampala - Arua road. In a recent attack, the rebels killed 14 civilians and set ablaze 100 houses in the Purongo area close to the national park.

Bruce Cockburn - Human Digest

LANDMINES AND BURMA

Anti-personnel landmines are used regularly inside Burma by the ruling junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Landmines are also used by several ethnic groups who fight the central government for greater autonomy.

The most common landmine used is the American M-76, of which the Burmese now manufacture their own copies. Both American-made and Burmese-made mines are found. Landmines are particularly brutal in Burma in light of the human rights violations already faced by non-combatants inside the country.

Burmese citizens are forcibly brought into armed conflicts, used as porters, human mine-clearers, and watchmen by SLORC and other armed groups. Civilians who encounter landmines while in the service of SLORC are reported to be denied any medical care, often executed on the spot or left to die unless they are discovered and brought to a medical center. Incidents have been reported of SLORC demanding compensation from villagers whose family or livestock have accidentally trodden on one of their mines.

In late 1995, opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her support for an international ban on landmines.

In Burma, as in other conflicts, landmines make no difference to the outcome, and they create no strategic advantage for either side. They only cause a great deal of suffering, agony, and long-term cost to the community through disablement, both among soldiers and civilians. Strong international conventions should be signed to ban their manufacture and use, and any government or opposition group found to be manufacturing or using them should be politically ostracized and face stiff economic penalties.

Except from a report by Jesuit Refugee Service

ANC DAILY NEWS BRIEFING

LANDMINES HINDER GROWTH OF VIC FALLS
VICTORIA FALLS August 7 1997 Sapa

Minefields surrounding Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe's prime resort area, are hindering expansion of the town which can no longer cope with the escalating number of tourists and congestion in residential areas.

Town authorities also fear Zimbabwe's booming leisure industry will be adversely affected if a visitor accidentally falls victim to one of the mines, although this has not happened over the 17 years of Zimbabwe's independence, the Ziana news agency reports.

However, local residents, livestock and wild animals have been blown up over the years.

The minefields planted by the Rhodesian Army at the height of the war of liberation of Zimbabwe had been designed to deter the nationalist movements based in neighbouring Zambia and Mozambique from crossing over to carry out armed insurgencies.

Victoria Falls town engineer Glen Sibanda says the current eight hotels in the town, which accommodates more than one million annual visitors to the resort, are inadequate.

As there is no more room for further expansion, the town is now facing a huge problem of squatting, resulting in a rise in diseases, crime and prostitution.

"Our main worry is that we cannot get land to accommodate all the visitors and workers," Sibanda says.

The town has also run short of land to build cemeteries in the face of increasing deaths brought about by Aids, and the few roads are constantly congested with an ever-increasing number of vehicles.

Town chairman Smile Bizwe says the fast-growing resort cannot expand anywhere, except in the direction of the minefields.

"The town authorities are trying their best not to over-develop the area by moving inland, but this is being inhibited by the minefields," he says, adding that the rest of the land comprises either national parks or state forests.

"As an international destination and national income earner, the town guards the area jealously, but if some tourist is accidentally blown by the mines the country's image will definitely be tarnished and security mocked," Bizwe says.

Wild animals tend to be more dangerous when injured by the mines.

"Animals help in detonating the landmines, but once a lion, buffalo or elephant is wounded it's as if a Third World War has been declared as every human being they come across is instantly attacked, leading to fatalities in some cases," Bizwe says.

The Zimbabwe National Army says although it has qualified personnel of more than 1000 people, it has inadequate, outdated and dilapidated mine-clearing and logistics equipment, some of it donated over 15 years ago.

Engineering corps director Colonel Sibangumuzi Khumalo says the army needs more than Zimdollars 150 million to start a five-year project to rid the country of an estimated two million mines scattered in and around border areas.

Government's annual allocation for the expensive exercise has been reduced from Zd3 million in the early 80's to a paltry Zd100000, resulting in the army managing to clear only 10 percent of the over 700km stretch of affected areas.

The International Committee of the Red Cross estimates that 119 million active mines are scattered in 71 countries, requiring the equivalent of Zd363 billion to remove, in what experts say under current conditions would take more than 1100 years.

General James Jamerson, the Germany-based US Forces Deputy Commander-in-Chief for Europe and Africa, suggests that government levy the rich business community and commercial farmers in affected areas.

Gen Jamerson says the US Government, which is already assisting Mozambique, Namibia and Rwanda, will soon review its policy towards helping more African countries to rid them of the death mines, adding that Zimbabwe is a favourable candidate.

It is estimated that each month 800 people are killed and 1200 maimed worldwide, while in Southern Africa, where five wars of liberation and three civil conflicts have been fought, at least 250,000 people have been killed by landmine explosions in the past 30 years.

Somalia News Update

LANDMINES A THREAT TO SOMALIS HIT BY WAR, FAMINE
By Jonathan Clayton

NAIROBI, Nov 24, Reuter - Their lives wrecked by civil war, vicious clan bloodletting, and a looming famine, the women and children of northern Somalia must also contend with a deadly, hidden enemy -- hundreds of thousands of landmines.

Each day they kill and maim Somali civilians, mainly children under the age of 16 and women, according to a report released on Tuesday by the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

"In northern Somalia, camel and goat herders are afraid to return to their grazing lands. City dwellers fear returning to their homes. The fields explode, the houses are booby-trapped. There are landmines everywhere," said Chris Giannou, a Canadian surgeon and member of the PHR team that drew up the report.

The 52-page report, "Hidden Enemies -- Landmines in Northern Somalia," details the extensive mining of the area by the army of fallen dictator Mohamed Siad Barre during a 1988-1991 civil war against secessionist northern rebels.

The mines, laid throughout the self-declared Republic of Somaliland, are mainly anti-personnel devices which tend to kill only when an individual takes the full force of the explosion. More likely, legs, ankles, feet are blown off.

The report said up to 1,000 landmine amputees had scant hope for adequate care or rehabilitation because "emergency, surgical and hospital services are grossly inadequate."

"There are few crutches, virtually no articifial limbs or physical therapy available," the report said. It added that one of the cruelest tactics of Siad Barre's forces was the deliberate mining of civilian homes. "In a pastoral society where muscle power means survival, the loss of a limb can be particularly cruel. Among nomads, amputees become a special burden to their families," it added.

Data collected from hospitals in the main northern cities of Hargeisa, Barbera and Borama showed that 74.6 per cent of mine victims treated between February 1991 and February 1992 were children between five and 15.

PHR said the mines were also preventing the repatriation of thousands of Somalis who fled into neighbouring Ethiopia during the height of the fighting between government forces and the Somali National Movement.

The mining has devastated what little economy there was in the impoverished corner of the Horn of Africa, bordering Ethiopia, Djibouti and the Red Sea.

After Siad Barre was overthrown by another rebel group in January 1991 and the country descended into an orgy of clan feuding, the Somali National Movement declared independence for the area once known as British Somaliland.

The report said that even agricultural and grazing areas -- populated mostly by nomads -- west of Burao had been mined along with water sources, and both main and secondary roads.

PHR called on U.S. President-elect Bill Clinton and the international community to answer "the desperate need for demining and rehabilitation in northern Somalia."

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