SCMP-Conference set to expose Burma

[tinkyi@xxxxxxx]

Subject: SCMP-Conference set to expose Burma's landmine menace 

Tuesday  March 16  1999

South Asia Today

March 16, 1999.
Conference set to expose Burma's landmine menace

BANGLADESH by ARSHAD MAHMUD in Dhaka
Sabbir Ahmed is the latest casualty of what has become a major threat to
Bangladeshis along the Burmese border - landmines.

Planted by the Burmese military to prevent tribal rebels crossing into
Burma, they are a menace of which the outside world has until now appeared
ignorant.

That is about to be rectified, with an international conference in Dhaka
this week expected to focus on the plight of landmine victims in the area.

Sabbir, a 35-year-old logger from the Bangladeshi border village of Valukia,
stepped on a landmine on February 10 just across the border near
Naikhangchari. He bled to death a few hours later.

The attention of the authorities in Bangladesh was first drawn to the menace
in 1993, when two Bangladeshis were killed by an explosion in the
no-man's-land along the border.

Shaken by the incident, the authorities contacted their Burmese
counterparts, who admitted to having planted the mines along a large swathe
of the border to deter incursions by Rohingya rebels.

A large number of Rohingyas - a Muslim minority in Burma - fled to
Bangladesh in the face of severe persecution by the Burmese military in the
early 1990s.

According to a survey carried out by the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles,
Burma has planted mines along a 55km stretch of the border.

In the five years since the first casualties, more than 50 people have died
and more than 100 others have been injured, many of them permanently
crippled.

The victims have included loggers, villagers and members of the border
security forces on both sides. Twenty-two wild elephants have also
reportedly been killed by mines.

"Thirteen people, including one of my troops, were killed in just two years
in 34 explosions since I came here in September 1996," said
Lieutenant-Colonel Zahiruddin Mohammad Babar, the local Bangladesh Rifles
commander.

As casualties have soared, Bangladesh has pressed for the removal of the
mines, which Dhaka has denounced as a flagrant violation of the Geneva
Convention.

Although the Burmese agreed to remove the mines, progress so far has been
slow.

"We're under constant threat but it seems there's no remedy in sight," said
Jainal Abedin, 20, of the village of Dargah Bil, who lost his right leg two
years ago in an explosion in which two companions were killed.