Q&A with Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan from the International Campaign to Ban Landmines:

The use of anti-personnel land mines by both the Burmese army and non-state armed groups causes hundreds of casualties each year and contaminates large areas of land used by civilians. The International Committee of the Red Cross has estimated that the total number of amputees living in Burma is 12,000 people, of whom the majority are probably mine victims.

Aside from accidental victims, there is serious concern for civilians who are used by the regime’s army, and possibly by non-state armed groups, as porters or de-facto human mine sweepers in marking land that has been mined.

According to a 2011 report by Geneva Call, an organisation that aims to engage armed non-state groups to comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, 34 out of 325 townships in Burma are contaminated with land mines and about five million people live in townships that contain mine-contaminated areas.

Mizzima reporter Thea Forbes talked with Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, a researcher for the annual report on Myanmar/Burma for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, about the fight to combat land mine use in Burma, the groups that deploy landmines and the effect of militarisation in Burma:

Mizzima: Do you think the Burmese government can be persuaded to sign onto the mine-ban treaty?

Answer: In general, this state is a key concern to our movement since 1997 and our bringing into existence the mine ban treaty. The majority of the world’s governments have signed on, and we have real tangible results from around the world. There are fewer victims every day, and more land is being cleared, but of course that is not the case in Burma. It is the only country in the world that we have determined to consistently use anti-personnel mines during that period. There are some other countries that have used them, but then desisted. Burma is the only country where land mine use by state forces has been ongoing during that time.

There are several countries where non-state armed groups have been using the anti-personnel mines, such as Columbia, throughout that time, which is similar to the case here. Can the Burmese government be persuaded? Our answer would be, eventually yes, but of course we don’t know how long that will take, Burma is a recalcitrant state, like several others, and we keep up engagement with the authorities on the issue, and if you have observed this country for a long period of time, progress within it happens incredibly slowly.  We have seen a modest amount of results, but compared to any other country in the world, of course, we are not even close to our goal yet.

Q: Do you have any information regarding the figures of landmines that are used by the state army and by non-state armed groups in Burma?

A: A landmine victim, Than Lwin, sitting in his hospital bed in Mone village, some 160 kilometers north of Rangoon, in a file photo dated 2006. Since then, hundreds of land mine victims have been added to the role of people killed or injured by land mines planted by the Burmese regime or by armed groups in the country. AFP Photo / Hla Hla Htay

No, that’s not something we usually track. I mean we often get a question from journalists, ‘How many landmines are in the ground?’ but that’s not really as important as how much ground is polluted by landmines, and what is it doing to the population in that area? Because this is how clearance is approached, you’ll know how many landmines are in the ground once you clear it, but before that time it’s a speculative endeavour. We don’t know how many mines they have in their stockpiles, they don’t publish that figure like most governments. The non-state armed groups mostly manufacture their mines, but they do have some mines in their stockpiles. Also they do not tell us how many mines they have in their stockpiles, nor how much they have in the way of component material for making mines. This is not something that we really ask. What we really ask is, will you halt using mines now?

Q: How do you approach that kind of engagement with the non-state armed groups and the state army in Burma?

A: In the same way. In both cases it’s a humanitarian issue. This weapon is different than any other types of weapons because you do not fire it at an adversary.

It gets laid out there, and it will kill or injure the next person who comes along, friend or foe, woman, child, man, it doesn’t see any difference in its enemies because it’s victim activated, which makes it different than most other weapons systems used in combat.

Also, once the conflict is over in an area, these things remain there, and mostly they victimize civilians if it’s after a conflict period, whether it’s a temporary halt in a conflict period, or the full ending of an armed conflict. The main target of this weapon ends up being civilians, so for these humanitarian reasons we engage either the non-state armed groups or the state to halt using this weapon.

Q: Are you involved in engaging with them on the clearance of landmines as well?

A: Our organisation is, like all of the main clearance entities such as the Mines Advisory Group and Halo Trust, a member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). They are of course independent organisations. We don’t direct their work, but all the clearance organisations are members of the ICBL. Clearance is one of the things that we focus on, and it’s a requirement for those states that join the treaty.

Q: What do you think is the main reason why Burma in particular is still deploying these landmines?

A: To a certain extent I think it is because it’s an infantry level war. They don’t use sophisticated weapons systems. If they were firing rockets over fields, then there wouldn’t really be a need to use anti-personnel landmines, but they’re engaging on a person to person level, so they are using what are essentially antiquated forms of armed conflict, including the use of anti-personnel mines. The immediate rationale that both sides have for using mines, is to lay them on paths that they expect their adversary to walk on, a secondary thing will be to put them around their camps, so that they can sleep easily at night and don’t have to have sentries out there watching for the enemy. Of course when they lay them out there on paths they frequently are left there and then people who may be moving between villages or going to the forest for collecting forest products may end up being the victims of them.

Q: Do you know which particular non-state armed groups in Burma are using the most landmines and also where they get them from?

A: The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)  probably. I have to say ‘probably’ because we can’t know for sure, but we believe that they are probably putting out the largest number of mines of all the non-state armed groups, closely followed by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, and then others would be somewhere below that. They are of course laying them in their areas of military operation wherever it is that they can carry on operations.

Q: Do you know if they actively warn civilians in the area about mines?

A: They say to us that they give verbal warnings. They don’t place any signboards, but they say, this is what the KNLA says. They say they give verbal warnings, however the civilian victims of mines that we have interviewed said, ‘nobody warned us about the mines in that area’. Now when it comes to the Tatmadaw, the state army, they have placed signboards in some places, especially around infrastructure, so for example around mines that they may lay near the ends of bridge abuttments, or around power pylons and other things that they place mines around, they fence those, and then they mark them.

Now that has some problems  of its own. Fencing and marking is good, but in the case of Burma when they fence them they use brush fences and brush fences will deteriorate in one, or certainly by two years, because of insects and weather, and they’ll have to be replaced frequently. Livestock get in them when they deteriorate and then the livestock become victims of mines. Usually the authorities do not replace these fences themselves. They order villagers in the area to replace them. This work may be paid, it may not be paid, but they are ordered to do so and they don’t really have a choice, and it is unacceptable to us that civilians should be ordered to work aorund an explosive military hazard, and in at least some cases they have become injured or killed by the mines in the areas they are fencing.

Q: Do you know where the non-state armed groups get their land mines?

A: Well, they seize as many state mines as they can, so they may get these on operations. They may find some that the Tatmadaw laid and they lift them, and then they redeploy them or use them. Outside of operations, they have got some in the past on the black market. That seems to have pretty much dried up, and it doesn’t seem like they can get them anymore. One of the advantages of having most of the states in this region sign the land mine ban treaty is tht they have to destroy their stockpiles––they can’t sell them, they can’t give them away. State stockpiles are always where arms are pilfered to appear on the black market,  and if you don’t have them in the state stockpiles they’re not available on the black market either. So it seems like, I’ve been told that, it’s very difficult for them to get any on the clandestine market at this point in time, I can’t guarantee that, but this is what we have heard. So they make their own out of components using explosives that are commercially available for building work, or for mineral quarries or other things like that. They get detonators from the same places, and so this is readily available in both Burma or here in Thailand or in other countries bordering the country.

Q: So do you have a game plan as to when you hope Burma will halt the use of landmines?

A: Of course it’s a long-term effort doing anything with this country, and we are in this for the long haul. Globally, we expect to be successful in our efforts in our lifetime. This is what we have stated, that we will resolve this problem in our lifetime and I would say we are on track, we are on track to do that. There are a couple of countries that are slower than everybody else, and Burma is certainly one of those. We are busy building as much of a consensus as we can that these weapons should no longer be used.

Q: Do you have any research or information regarding civilians self-manufacturing their own mines to protect their land?

A: This is what we call land mine militarisation. Militarisation is the process that takes place when military ideas and military material become so commonplace that they begin being used for things other than war. So that’s what militarisation is; it’s when the ideas of the military and the tools of the military start being used for other things because they become so common to the civilian population; they become so inerred to their presence. So we are seeing in Burma at this point in time the use of land mines for a variety of other purposes than warfare, including clandestine trade of environmental or other types of contraband, for illegal logging operations, drug operations, smuggling of cars, as well as people using them within their own villages.

Yes, land mine militarisation has happened; they have been used in some areas of that country for a very very long period of time, people have been exposed to them for so long that they are beginning to be used for other purposes than war. And that is of course very dangerous and will pose great problems for mine clearance in the future. This is a side effect of the armed conflicts, so the real focus should be on the armed conflict. We’re calling for an immediate halt in any new mine use by all actors. To get a permanent ban in the country will require a genuine cease-fire and peace accord process, because that’s the only thing that will bring armed conflict to an end and that will more or less put in place a mechanism for a permanent ban on anti-personnel mines in the country. That will basically take care of this other issue; the other issue, the militarisation is a side effect of the armed conflict.

One of the figures we are putting out right now though, to emphasize the nature of the problem in Burma is that 10 years ago Burma was in the top 10 countries for the number of land mine victims produced; five years ago it was in the top four; three years ago it’s in the top three.

It’s a problem that’s not well known, but it’s a problem that’s becoming increasingly hard to ignore from these types of figures, and this is based on the number of mine victims that we can actually record. We don’t believe we get close to the number of mine victims that occur in the country. There are no official figures, no ethnic group puts out figures for the number of their people who are injured or killed by these mines; the state does not provide this type of figure, the health system does not provide it. So we have to find these on our own, and we believe we find only a fraction of what is really out there, the figure that I just gave you is based upon what we can actually verify.

We are currently compiling figures for how many land mine victims there were in 2010 and that will be released in our 2011 report.