Photographers bear witness to Cambodia’s landmine legacy

Sean Sutton's photographs exploring the enduring effect of landmines in rural Cambodia will be on display this month at the InterContinental Hotel. Photo by Sean Sutton

Fatal footprint. Photo by Sean Sutton

Tuesday, 03 April 2012
Deborah Seccombe and Sean Gleeson
The Phnom Penh Post

Impact Clearing Cambodia’s Deadly Legacy runs from April 5 to 25 at The Insider Gallery, Intercontinental Hotel Phnom Penh 296 Mao Tse Toung Blvd, Phnom Penh. The exhibit is part of MAG’s Landmine Awareness Week of Action running from the March 28 to April 4.

As part of international efforts to raise awareness around the impact of landmines, organisations working on the issue in Cambodia are turning to art, particularly photography, to illustrate the devastating legacy of unexploded ordnance that remain in the Kingdom even decades after the official end of armed conflict.

This Wednesday, a photography exhibition titled Impact Clearing Cambodia’s Deadly Legacy will launch at InterContinental Hotel to coincide with the United Nations International Day for Mine Awareness.

The show, co-presented by the Mine Advisory Group, features work by former international press photographer Sean Sutton documenting 15 visits to the Kingdom.

Mirrors ease Cambodian amputees' phantom pain

Canadian trainer Stephen Sumner (R) assists a Cambodian amputee to use a mirror during the first mirror therapy training session at the Cambodia Trust, a rehabilitation charity for amputees in Kampong Chhnang province, some 90 kilometers northwest of Phnom Penh on January 27, 2012. Photo courtesy: AFP

By Michelle Fitzpatrick

KAMPONG CHHNANG, February 27, 2012 (AFP) - Pov Sopheak lost his left leg in a landmine blast in 1990. Yet some nights the pain in his "left foot" is so bad he cannot sleep. Like many amputees, he suffers from phantom pain.

Now, after two decades of agony, the Cambodian is embracing an innovative technique that promises relief simply by using a mirror to trick the brain into "moving" the missing limb, allowing the pain to subside.

Sitting in a chair and holding a full-length mirror against his leg, Sopheak, 50, smiles self-consciously as some two dozen physical therapists gather around him.

Fundraising for anti-tank mine victims in O'Sampor commune, Malai district

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Cambodia’s Healing Fields

"I have a beautiful voice, but my body is not whole," says singer Sovanreaksmey Kheng, who at age ten lost his right hand and eye in a detonator explosion. He is one of many land mine survivors in a nation on the mend. (Photograph by Lynn Johnson)

Selected as Miss Landmine Cambodia 2009, Dos Sopheap tries on her prize, a titanium leg, with pageant organizer Morten Traavik. Although she later found the leg too uncomfortable to wear, her fame brought her sponsorship for college.

Chhin Boreak, 19, lost his right arm to a land mine at the age of 10. One of 12 children in his family, he came to live at the relief center in northwest Cambodia founded by mine removal expert Aki Ra for kids and young adults whose families can't care for them. "It is my ambition to become a tour guide so I can teach tourists about my country's history," Boreak says. "I especially love the carvings on the temples and the stories they tell."

At a Battambang hospital, an x-ray of a child's amputated legs shows that his bones are still growing, making it painful for him to wear a prosthesis.

The Healing Fields

Land mines once crippled a war-ravaged Cambodia. Today the nation is a model for how to recover from this scourge.

January 2012
By Mark Jenkins
Phototograph by Lynn Johnson
National Geographic

Delicately brushing away the soil with his fingers, Aki Ra uncovers a dark green land mine buried two inches beneath the overgrown dirt road. The size of a large soup can, the mine was planted by the Khmer Rouge about 15 years ago on this ox track in northwestern Cambodia—the most densely mined region of one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

"This is the type 69 Bouncing Betty made in China," says Aki Ra, his breath fogging the blastproof visor of his helmet. Bouncing Betty is the American nickname for a bounding fragmentation land mine. The pressure of a footstep causes it to leap out of the ground and then explode, spraying shrapnel in every direction. It can shred the legs of an entire squad.

Soft-spoken and cherubic, Aki Ra knows the inner workings of the Bouncing Betty and just about every other variety of mine. In the mid-1970s, when he was five, the Khmer Rouge separated him from his parents and took him into the jungle with other orphans. At that time, Pol Pot, commander of the Khmer Rouge, had plunged the country into chaos, closing schools, hospitals, factories, banks, and monasteries; executing teachers and businessmen; and forcing millions of city dwellers into a gulag of labor camps and farms. The small hands of children like Aki Ra were invaluable tools. He was trained to lay land mines, defuse and deconstruct enemy mines, and reuse the TNT for what are now called improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Some years later, when Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia, they dragooned Aki Ra into their army, and he was forced to fight against his former captors. When the United Nations' peacekeeping forces finally arrived in 1992, he'd been living in the jungle for some 15 years. He joined the UN as a deminer. When the peacekeepers left two years later, much of the best agricultural lands—vegetable gardens, pastures, rice fields—were still mined. Farmers trying to reclaim their fields were being blown to pieces. For a decade and a half, using only a knife and a stick, Aki Ra worked as an unpaid sapper, defusing rather than detonating land mines, reclaiming his country one square foot at a time. By his own count, he has defused some 50,000 devices: blast mines, antitank mines, bounding mines, and other explosives.

"I found a lot of mines that I laid," he says with a conflicted sense of pride and shame.

Landmines kill 20, injure 75 Cambodians in 5 months

June 29, 2011
Xinhua

Cambodia has seen 95 landmine casualties in the first five months of this year, with 20 killed and other 75 injured, a report said on Tuesday.

According to the report from the Cambodian Mine and Explosive Remnants of War Victim Information System, from 1979 to May 2011, a total of 63,901 mine/ERW casualties were recorded. Of the casualties, 19,595 were killed and 44,306 injured from mine/ERW accidents.

It added that 81 percent of the victims were men, 8 percent were women, and 11 percent were children.

Cambodia is one of most mine affected nations in the world as the result of 30 years of armed conflict. Mines had been laid in Cambodia during the decades of chronic conflicts from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s.

Cambodian trek aids victims of landmines

Katrina Doherty is off to Cambodia

7 Dec 10
By Kirsty Cranitch
South-East Advertiser (Australia)

SOUTHSIDER Katrina Doherty is on a Cambodian hike to raise awareness of the continuing impact on the local population of unexploded landmines, cluster bombs and other remnants of the conflict.

Speaking to the Advertiser before she left for Community Challenge Cambodia, Ms Doherty said she was impressed with hike organiser Mines Advisory Group’s (MAG) work.

“The effects of war last a very long time and people forget about them,” Ms Doherty said.

“MAG trains staff, of whom 90 per cent are Cambodian nationals they are victims of bombs and land mines and have prosthetic limbs.

“They do the day-to-day work of clearing rockets, missiles and grenades and they’re not only trained in that dangerous task but also in community development.

“This is because large areas have been heavily mined throughout Cambodia so staff work with authorities to decide what are the most important areas to clear for schools, water access and farming land.”

On the challenge, Ms Doherty is spending two days trekking around the temples of the greater Angkor Wat region and then working on a community project to build traditional Cambodian houses for the poor and landmine victims.

She has raised $4500 for the hike.

She plans to spend the next year working in Timor off the coast of Darwin.

Children of Cambodian land mine victims to play football in South Africa

Friday, April 02, 2010
By Sopheng Cheang
Canadian Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Children of Cambodian land mine victims will compete in a football tournament in South Africa during the World Cup to highlight the need to eradicate such weapons worldwide, an organizer said Friday.

The competition is being organized by Spirit of Soccer, a private group that uses football to teach children in countries affected by land mines about their danger. It currently operates football coaching projects in Cambodia and Iraq.

Stephen Sonderman, who heads the group in Cambodia, said eight teenagers will take part in the Football of Hope Festival in South Africa from late June to the middle of July.

The eight were selected from farming families affected by land mines in the northwestern province of Battambang, one of the most heavily mined regions of the country.

Organizers said the competition will bring together 32 teams from around the world, each representing organizations that use football for social development.

"This opportunity will open doors for these mine-affected Cambodian children who have few opportunities to just be kids and play," Sonderman said.

He said two coaches have been training the eight players, aged 15 to 18, for several years.

Cambodians continue to be killed each year from an estimated 4 million to 6 million land mines and unexploded ordnance that remain in rural areas following three decades of conflict.

Spirit of Soccer said it is also joining other groups to mark International Mine Action Day on April 4 with a football festival in Jordan for players from that country, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.

Miss Landmine to Sweden

Dos Sopheap (Photo: The Phnom Penh Post)

09.03.2010
ScandAsia.com

When Dos Sopheap was four years she stepped on a landmine in his home country of Cambodia and lost his leg. Now she has won the first prize in the beauty contest Miss Landmine - where the award ceremony was held in secret because the Cambodian government banned it, reports Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

Now, the photos from the competition is a high-profile exhibition in Sweden.

When the Cambodian government banned the beauty contest the Norwegian artist Morten Traavik, the initiator of the contest for the second consecutive year, went around in Cambodia and met with the finalists in the secrecy.

He gave $ 1000 in prize to the beauty of Dos Sopheap, together with a prototype of a prosthesis to replace her lost leg. The prosthesis, is made of titanium and much smoother than the objects she has today.

“I am extremely pleased and proud to receive this award, especially the new prosthetic leg,” said Dos Sopheap to the Phnom Penh Post. Dos Sopheap will use the prize money to complete her studies. Her future dream is to work as an economist for a nonprofit organization.

Photo exhibition Miss Landmine

On March 9 the Army Museum in Stockholm opens the gates to the famous photo exhibition Miss Landmine. It shows colour photographs in large format and aims to shift the focus from women in a offer position to a rather strong survivor.

In this way, Norwegian Morten Traavik wants to reduce the feelings of inferiority and guilt diminished and instead create pride and strength.

Facts

• Every year, 20000 people are injured or killed from landmines.
• The UN has so far recognized 2 million people as victims of landmines, of which 300000 are in need of extensive care.
• Cambodia is the country with most mines in the world.

Number of Cambodian landmine casualties shows further annual drop

Thu, 11 Feb 2010
DPA

Phnom Penh - Official figures released Thursday showed the number of Cambodians injured by landmines and unexploded ordnance dropped 12 per cent last year from 2008 although the number killed remained constant at 47 in each year. A total of 243 people were killed or injured in 2009 by explosive remnants of war (ERW), down from 271 the previous year, the Cambodian Mine/ERW Victim Information Service said.

The number of victims has shown a steady decline year-on-year since 1994 when almost 3,000 people were killed or injured.

Chhiv Lim, a project officer for the service, said a survey undertaken four years ago showed several reasons behind the annual decline in deaths and injuries.

"We found the number one reason was demining activities, and that's because we have a lot of people involved in demining," he said. "The second is that people [have been educated] to understand the dangers of mines and ERW."

Other experts have previously said a further factor in Cambodia's predominantly agricultural society has been farmers earning better prices for crops. Improved incomes mean less need to forage for supplementary products such as bamboo and firewood and a lower risk at coming across unexploded ordnance.

More than half of last year's deaths and injuries came from three provinces in the country's north-west. The majority of victims were men while around one-third were children.

In 1999, Cambodia ratified the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. While more than 150 countries have signed the treaty, China, Russia and the United States are among those that refuse to do so.

The treaty gave countries 10 years until 2009 to clear all mines from their territory, but Cambodia missed that goal. In December, Cambodia was granted a 10-year extension on the deadline although it is still thought unlikely to reach that revised target.

This week, Germany pledged 1.4 million US dollars for demining in Cambodia's north-west, adding to around 10 million dollars it has provided for demining in the country since 1999.

Cambodia has one of the highest disability rates in the world, a legacy of the country's decades of civil war that started in the 1960s and finished in the late 1990s.

A Race Changes Lives in Cambodia

San Mao, center, the winner of the 10-kilometer, or 6.2-mile, race for athletes with artificial legs, shook hands with the second place winner in the 14th Angkor Wat International Half Marathon 2009. (Rahman Roslan for the International Herald Tribune)

December 8, 2009
By LIZ GOOCH
The New York Times

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — At first, San Mao thought he had been shot in the leg.

It was a reasonable assumption on that day, nearly 20 years ago, given that Khmer Rouge soldiers were forcing him to carry ammunition across the Cambodian countryside. But when Mr. San Mao, then 17, found he was unable to get up from the forest floor, he realized that the lower part of his right leg was gone — blown off by one of the millions of land mines planted across the country during its decades of conflict. Many mines still lurk dangerously in rural areas.

After he lost his leg, Mr. San Mao was unable to resume his work clearing fields for farming. People looked down on him, he said, and no one would give him a job.

But on Sunday morning, any sense of despair seemed well behind him. Against the majestic backdrop of the Angkor Wat temple ruins, Mr. San Mao, 35, grinned broadly as he climbed a podium to be crowned the champion of the 10-kilometer, or 6.2-mile, race for athletes with artificial legs, held as part of the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon.

Mr. San Mao, who is now married with a 7-year-old daughter and works as a motorcycle taxi driver in Phnom Penh, was one of almost 3,500 disabled and able-bodied athletes from around the world who competed in various divisions.

The races for disabled people, which have been part of the Angkor Wat half marathon since its inception 13 years ago, are part of a campaign to help them gain acceptance in Cambodia, which has one of the world’s highest concentrations of people with disabilities, many of them land mine survivors.

“Many of our athletes have gone from being the most marginalized in society to national heroes,” said Christopher Minko, the founder and secretary general of the Cambodian National Volleyball League (Disabled), a nongovernmental organization.

While demining efforts have been under way across Cambodia for more than 15 years, the violent aftereffects of three decades of war are still being felt.

Last year, 47 people were killed and 222 injured by land mines, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Since 1979, land mines have killed 19,476 Cambodians and injured 43,926. Nongovernmental organizations say the victims are usually farmers.

One of the national heroes Mr. Minko referred to is Van Vun, 23, a Cambodian wheelchair-racing champion in multiple categories who hopes to qualify for the marathon at the London 2012 Paralympics.

Mr. Van Vun has been unable to walk since contracting polio when he was 18 months old. Growing up, he would shuffle around on his hands before he got his first wheelchair, at the age of 15.

Before he started competing, he said, people used to ignore him. Now, people stop him in the streets and neighbors in his home village near Phnom Penh ask to see his trophies.

“The situation is much better than before,” he said. “It makes me feel happy. I’m proud because I’m No. 1.”

With his legs tucked tightly underneath him, Mr. Van Vun rode his broad shoulders and muscled forearms to victory in the 21-kilometer wheelchair division Sunday at Angkor Wat, in a chair donated by Canada’s national volleyball team for the disabled.

The Cambodian volleyball league organizes both volleyball and wheelchair racing programs for more than 250 people each year, most of whom are land mine victims.

Honored by the United Nations Development Program in 2006, the group runs a national volleyball competition with 10 clubs and trains 50 wheelchair athletes like Mr. Van Vun.

The league has worked with about 2,000 people with disabilities since it was established in 1999, but Mr. Minko, an Australian, said it had nowhere near enough funds to meet Cambodian demand for sports for the disabled. “We have only touched the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Minko said.

The success of the national volleyball team — which finished seventh at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, beating the host nation — has helped raise the profile of disabled athletes in Cambodia.

The team, which will compete in the World Organization Volleyball for Disabled World Cup 2009 in Phnom Penh later this month, is ranked third in the world and is aiming for the top spot.

“Cambodians now recognize the ability of Cambodians with a disability, and that these people are bringing great honor and dignity to the nation through their sporting endeavors on the international arena,” Mr. Minko said.

Yann Drouet, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s physical rehabilitation project in Cambodia, said sport could provide a psychological boost to amputees as well as play an important role in their physical rehabilitation. “It demonstrates to the amputee that they can trust their device and they can do things that they didn’t think they could do after an amputation,” he said.

Yamaguchi Taku, project manager at Hearts of Gold, the Japanese nongovernmental organization that runs the Angkor Wat race, said people often lost “their hope to live” after they were injured by land mines, and some families hid disabled relatives away from the public eye.

“After the explosion, they have no idea how to live, how to survive, how to continue their lives,” he said.

Sports can reduce their feelings of isolation, he said. “It gets them back into normal life.”

Since it was first held in 1996, the Angkor Wat International Half Marathon has raised more than $218,800 to help support Cambodians with disabilities, with a focus on providing amputees with prostheses.

The unique course, which winds through the world-heritage listed Angkor Wat complex, is growing in popularity with locals and foreigners alike, attracting about 1,780 runners from countries as far away as Argentina, Finland and Russia and about 1,700 Cambodians this year.

For Mr. San Mao, who has competed in Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Korea and trains twice a week with the Cambodian Disabled Athletics Federation, the win Sunday was bittersweet.

He says he knows he could have run faster — if only he had had the proper prosthesis.

Mr. San Mao, who won his division every year from 2002 to 2007, last year broke the prosthesis he used specially for running.

Since then, he has been forced to compete with the artificial limb that he wears every day because he cannot afford to have his running prosthesis fixed, or find a donor to buy a new one.

Nevertheless, he was thrilled to return to the winner’s podium. “I feel very happy I won the prize,” he said.

Governments plan to improve help for landmine victims

04 Dec 2009
By Anastasia Moloney

CARTAGENA, Colombia (AlertNet)- As a little girl, Kosal Song often helped her mother collect firewood near her village in Cambodia. Then, aged five, a landmine exploded and she lost her right leg.

Since the accident 20 years ago, Song has had to rely on support from her family and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), who have provided prosthetic legs and sponsored her schooling and university English degree.

"I couldn't have survived without their help and my family," she told AlertNet at a major landmine conference in Cartagena, Colombia.

"When I was nine, I remember my father made me a wooden crutch so that I could walk one kilometer to school."

There are around 300,000 landmine victims around the world and many share Song's experiences. This week, the issue has dominated discussions among the 156 signatory countries of the Mine Ban treaty gathered at the conference.

While significant headway has been made towards destroying stockpiled mines since the landmine treaty was signed 10 years ago, far less progress had been made towards pushing governments to providing assistance to mine survivors.

"Most survivors have yet to see a substantial improvement in their lives and in access to medical care, physical rehabilitation, psychological support, social services, education and employment," said Christine Beerli, vice-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in an address to delegates on Thursday.

She urged donor countries and state parties to invest more in victim assistance, an issue which has received roughly 5 percent of the $4 billion spent on mine action during the last decade.

"In the next five years, our action, or inaction, in this field will determine whether the Convention makes a real difference to the life of survivors," said Beerli.

While watching the conference, Song remembered a childhood growing up in isolation as she watched other children play and run around freely.

"Survivors are lonely, they lose their arms or legs, and then they lose their hope," she said and wiped away her tears.

Charity worker's 10,000 thank-yous as readers help her win degree

Nov 8 2009
Lesley Roberts
Sunday Mail (UK)

LIFE-CHANGING charity worker Sisary Kheny graduated after seven long years of study - and immediately thanked big-hearted Sunday Mail readers.

Generous Scots who read her inspirational story donated £10,000 to help the Cambodian student learn the skills needed to help landmine amputees in her home country.

After the 30-year-old graduated in last week, she said: "I would like to say a big thank-you to all those people.

"This means so much to me and my family and my country.

"I can now serve the people with disability in my country and can help train other professionals from low income nations."

Using coursework emailed to her home in Phnom Penh, Sisary has become an expert in making and fitting artificial limbs and braces.

Retired teacher Sue Walters, from Glasgow, spearheaded the campaign to help fund Sisary's place on Strathclyde University's world acclaimed rehab studies course. And she was in the audience at the uni's Barony Hall to watch Sisary collect her degree.

The pair met by chance in 2001 when Sisary was in Scotland for a conference on prosthetics and Sue contacted the Sunday Mail for help.

Sue said: "I knew right away she would make a difference in her home country if she got the right training.

"And after the piece appeared in the Sunday Mail, lots of people got in touch to say they wanted to help but we had to keep it going to fund Sisary's whole course.

"More and more people heard about us over the years but we kept many of the original readers who donated.

"One woman died and her husband wrote to me to say he wanted to keep making donations on her behalf. It was that important to her."

Landmines scattered by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s are still wreaking havoc in Cambodia and Sisary treats thousands of people who've lost limbs.

Illnesses such as polio, long-since wiped out in the UK, are rife in the poverty-stricken country - leaving many kids with limb deformities.

Mum-of-two Sue, 66, said: "Sisary is determined her education is used to help educate others in her homeland. She really is inspiring.

"She's like my daughter and she calls me 'mother'."

Sisary, who works for the Cambodia Trust charity, said: "I can't thank Sue enough for what she's done.

"I can't find the words to say how I feel about her."

Cambodia war survivors turn to music

Phun Ouern, landmine victim, and a member of a traditional orchestra, smokes while waiting for the next performance by the group, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Nov Rey, 50, an acid attack victim, looks on as she waits to sing during a performance by traditional Cambodian musicians, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Phun Ath, blinded by a B-40 rocket attack, pauses between songs, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. Phun is part of an orchestra, many who have lost limbs or have been injured by landmines, that plays daily for tourists who visit the temple at Bantay Srey. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Kham Ny, a traditional Cambodian musician looks on as he plays the 'tro' which is similar to a violin, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. Kham is part of an orchestra, many who have lost limbs or have been injured by landmines, that plays daily for tourists who visit the temple at Bantay Srey. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Traditional Cambodian musicians, many amputees from landmines, gather to play for tourists, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Kong Sam Ath, 51, lights incense and offers prayers as he and other traditional Cambodian musicians prepare to perform for tourists, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Khan Ny, 55, plays the "tro" a traditional Cambodian musical instrument similar to a violin, Friday, March 6, 2009, near Bantay Srey temple on the outskirts of Siem Reap, Cambodia. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Cambodia traditional orchestra leader and landmine victim Khieu Sarath leads this band near Ta Prohm temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Saturday, March 7, 2009. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)
Cambodia traditional orchestra leader and landmine victim Khieu Sarath prepares to lead this band near Ta Prohm temple in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Saturday, March 7, 2009. (AP Photo/David Longstreath)

04/12/2009
By DENIS D. GRAY
Associated Press Writer

SIEM REAP, Cambodia—By the walls of ancient temples, just as the morning sun dapples the jungle floor and birds sing, survivors of Cambodia's killing fields and minefields drop their crutches, put aside their artificial limbs or blindly grope for their instruments—and then play music that can break the heart.

A tentative, mournful melody floats from a two-stringed "tro" bowed by Kak Vy, whose right leg is gone. He is joined by a zither plucked by Khieu Sarath, who lost his parents and sisters to Khmer Rouge murderers and whose mine-shattered leg was amputated without morphine. Phun Ath, blinded by a rocket, taps a drum softly.

Now, the first tourists arrive at the wondrous temples of Angkor, and the 20 musicians—amputees, blind, scarred, all destitute—hope that by dusk their playing will have earned them enough to sustain their families for another day. Together, they support more than 100 children and wives.

The musicians' lives mirror Cambodia's agony: 3 million dead in three decades of a savage war, American bombing, the Khmer Rouge reign of terror, a civil conflict and now coping in a country where a third of the people earn less than one dollar a day.

Several members of Ankor's two orchestras say they teetered on the verge of suicide before finding hope by banding together to play the music of their ancestors.

"When I lost my leg, I didn't want to live on this earth anymore," says Khieu Sarath. "Before I lost my leg my friends called me 'friend,' but when I became a disabled man even my close friends would call out, "One legged-man, where are you going?'"

Like almost all the musicians, Khieu Sarath describes his trials beginning during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in the mid-1970s when some 2 million of his fellow Cambodians perished.

The fanatic communists executed his father because he allowed cows he was tending to stray into a cornfield, and his starving mother because she stole a cup of porridge from the communal kitchen. His two sisters were killed for taking a nap after grueling hours building a dam.

In the civil war that followed the Khmer Rouge fall in 1979, Khieu Sarath set off a land mine during a firefight, writhing in pain for 16 days in a remote jungle until help arrived. Then they tied his hands to a tree.

"My leg was cut like raw meat with a hack saw, without any injections," says the 48-year-old former soldier.

"Life was difficult for a disabled man. At the beginning I did not particularly want to be a musician. But I had no choice. I had to find something that was not difficult for a disabled man and this job fits a lot of people like me," he says.

Khieu Sarath gathered some of the disabled in 1997 and now seven of them play at Angkor's much-visited Ta Phrom, a monastic complex where gnarled roots and soaring trunks of ancient banyan and silk cotton trees intertwine with crumbling, dusky temples—a scene out of Hollywood's "Tomb Raider," which indeed was partially filmed here.
"Victims of Landmines," reads a sign in five languages. If every passing tourist who clicked a camera donated, the group would be rolling in cash, but as it is they're very lucky to earn several dollars apiece, plus $4 daily saved in a communal pot for any among them in distress.

This help is also extended to the second orchestra, which plays at Banteay Srei, the "jewel of Khmer art," a 10th century temple of pinkish sandstone famed for its delicate wall carvings.

Here, the 13 musicians sit at the temple's edge on a blue plastic sheet spread over a forest floor strewn with winter's withered leaves. The buzz of cicadas and the wind's rustle accompany their sometimes bouncy, sometimes elegiac melodies played on instruments very like those depicted on the centuries-old friezes of Angkor.

Most are ex-soldiers, some even one-time battlefield enemies. Several desperate villagers from the surrounding area have joined them, including Nov Rey, the only woman among the 20 whose husband threw acid on her face for a reason she still can't fathom. A lovely smile shines from her scarred face as she relates what it takes to care of her five children alone.

The group was brought together in 1999 by Phun Saroeun, who lost his left leg and two fingers fighting the Khmer Rouge alongside his two brothers, one now blind, the other missing a leg and both also members of the orchestra. Six of their cousins, an entire family, were exterminated by the Khmer Rouge.

"I hope that a regime like the Khmer Rouge will never return to Cambodia. I hope that my children will not have to endure the same suffering as we did," says the 46-year-old father of seven.

The Angkor musicians say the long delayed, United Nations-backed trial of the top five Khmer Rouge leaders, which began in earnest last month, may bring some closure and peace to them and their country.

"As an ordinary person, I want all five of them to publicly admit before the Cambodian people that they are guilty. I want them to confess that they committed genocide," Phun Saroeun says.

But it's the daily struggle and the fate of their children in tomorrow's Cambodia which absorbs most of their energies, thoughts and dreams.

"There is no one to help us disabled people," says Khieu Sarath, who supports eight children, including an adopted son. "We have to rely on ourselves, help ourselves. If we don't sacrifice ourselves for our children, they will not have a bright future."
———
Associated Press Writer Sopheng Cheang contributed to this report.

Miss Landmine: exploitation or bold publicity for the victims?

Norwegian theatre director defends what aid agencies dismissed as a freak show

Tuesday April 22 2008
Ian MacKinnon
South-east Asia correspondent
The Guardian (UK)

In the realm of beauty pageants it is not the stuff of little girls' dreams. Yet after the success of the inaugural Miss Landmine competition in Angola, the organisers plan to take the contest to Cambodia next year.

Both countries rank alongside Afghanistan as among the world's most heavily mined places, with a correspondingly high number of victims who suffered the terrible effects of the weapons left festering after years of conflict.

It was the plight of the victims that prompted a Norwegian theatre and film director, Morten Traavik, to come up with the challenging - some would say tasteless - contest to spotlight the ongoing tragedy. "My feminist mother was very unimpressed by the idea of a beauty pageant," said Traavik, 36. "Here in Norway beauty pageants are regarded as the work of the devil. They're seen as very, very politically incorrect."

But Traavik shrugs off any criticism. He is buoyed by the attention-grabbing headlines won by the first Miss Landmine competition staged in Angola earlier this month. "I'm a great believer in counterpoint - a good old theatre trick," he said. "Here the counterpoint is to put 'landmine' and 'miss' together. It's the counterpoint of the serious and tragic reality of landmines and the joyful celebration of life inherent in a beauty pageant."

The joint winners of the Angolan contest, Augusta Urica, 31, and Maria Restino Manuel, 26, were the embodiment of Traavik's ideal at the finale in the capital, Luanda, swathed in designer gowns, sashes and silver tiaras that crowned them Miss Landmine 2008.

With 10 women representing their provinces, she hobbled up the platform on crutches to collect her prize - a golden, state-of-the-art prosthetic limb to replace the leg blown off 10 years ago.

Traavik came up with the notion four years ago when he visited Luanda with a girlfriend. He said he was captivated by the Angolan passion for beauty pageants and their carnival atmosphere after some local children asked him to judge a "Miss Backstreet" contest. But he was also struck by the suffering caused by landmines that had left more than 80,000 people maimed after a 20-year civil war, and decided that with his theatre background he was ideally-placed to marry the two things.

After some persuasion, the EU put up some money, along with Norway's arts council, the Angolan government's de-mining commission and a charity run by the country's first lady.

Norway's foreign ministry steered clear, but is considering chipping in for Cambodia's Miss Landmine, tentatively set for 12 months' time, even though Traavik admitted that some international aid agencies had dismissed the first contest as a "freak show".

"In principle we are all ready to go," said Traavik. "We have the support of the Cambodian authorities and we're collaborating with Cambodia's Disabled People's Organisation which is already, on my behalf, travelling about the
country meeting possible participants, who are enthusiastic."

In Cambodia there should be no shortage of contenders for the 2009 title. There are 25,000 amputees among the country's 63,000 victims of landmines and blasts from unexploded ordinance left after 30 years of civil war.

Up to 1m landmines remain buried, out of the estimated million mines planted along the border with Thailand after the invading Vietnamese left in 1989 and the 400,000 planted elsewhere in the country.

"That's a shockingly high number," said Tim Porter, the Cambodian programme director of the Halo Trust, whose staff cleared 40,000 mines in their sector alone last year.

But at least the lurking menace is claiming fewer victims. Last year,
Cambodia suffered 347 landmine victims, down from 450 in 2006. That, too, was an improvement on the 847 in 2002, the result of mines degrading with time and failing to explode.

Still, the legacy of years of injuries is grim and Traavik is sure to have contestants eager to win a new prosthesis and prize money in impoverished Cambodia.

Yet even he accepts that in the conservative Buddhist country the format will have to be radically different. "There's no question the women will be wearing bikinis," he said. "They will more likely be wearing traditional Khmer costumes. But undoubtedly there will be ways to highlight their disabilities."

Kek Galabru, the president of the Phnom Penh human rights group Licadho, is scornful of such a strategy to shine a light on tragedy.

"No doubt awareness is important," she said. "But for me this is using the victims. For them it is still very painful. But they're saying 'look at me, I'm still beautiful, even though I've lost my leg.' We don't need to raise awareness in this questionable way.

"I'm sure there'll be a lot of resistance from the Cambodian people. I can hear it now: 'What? A contest of the suffering?'"

Traavik remains unrepentant in the face of such distaste, adamant that the means justify the end.

"What I set out to achieve - indeed I think we've achieved it already - was to highlight globally a very serious and unnecessary social problem," he said. This contest attracts attention to the issue, but it also challenges our western way of looking at the third world. I'm so fed up of social campaigns with black and white photos of Africans or Cambodians, in rags."

Cambodian mine legacy lives on after Pol Pot

Landmines continue to injure and kill Cambodians every day, more than 30 years after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. (Photo: Reuters)

Friday, April 18, 2008
ABC Radio Australia

Cambodians have been marking the tenth anniversary this week of the death of former Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot.

He died of a reported heart attack on 15 April 1998 in the remote northern Cambodian outpost of Anlong Veng, the Khmer Rouge's final stronghold.

Up to two million people died of overwork and starvation or were executed under the Khmer Rouge regime, which abolished religion, property rights, currency and schools.

The regime ended in January 1979, when the invading Vietnamese army took control of Phnom Penh.

As a joint Cambodia-UN tribunal set up to try surviving Khmer Rouge leaders continues to suffer delays and funding problems, a senior Australian official says the dictatorship's legacy lives on in the form of millions of landmines scattered across Cambodia.

Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for International Assistance, Bob McMullen told Radio Australia's Cambodian service that landmines continue to kill and injure ordinary people "every day".

"It is a terrible tragedy to see what's happening in Cambodia today, when people are trying so hard to recreate wealth and opportunity in the country," he said.

Mr McMullen says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government is tackling the problem on two fronts in collaboration with Phnom Penh and international donors.

"One is to remove as many landmines as possible - and the task is enormous, but we have to keep at it - and also to continue to provide assistance," he said.

Mr McMullen says Australia is involved in a series of international processes aimed at regulating the use of mines, cluster munitions and small arms.

"All of these weapons cause unnecessary grief and hardship to ordinary civilians," he said.

"It's terrible that wars happen, but if they do go on, they are between combatants and there's a different body of international law that deals with that. But we are concerned with the impact on civilians, innocent people, particularly children who get caught up in this.

"When I was in Cambodia, I visited some of the projects making prosthetic limbs, and some of them were so small, made for small children, and it showed how serious the problem is, of the effect of landmines on young children playing, in the way that children around the world love to do."

Mr McMullen says Australia supports an international campaign to end the use of landmines "in a manner that will affect civilians".

"People have been very indiscriminate, putting landmines in places that aren't about an ongoing miltary struggle, but designed to impede the lives of ordinary people going about their business," he said.

"So Australia's very much an active player in the international campaign against landmines, and we will stay that way."

The Enemy Within

April 11, 2008
Radio Singapore International

In Cambodia today, 6 million land-mines are still threatening to injure or kill anyone who comes across their way. Wounded and amputated, the survivors must face enemies buried deep within: the acceptance of an injured body, an un-certain future, social stigma and isolation.

In her new film titled, “The Enemy Within”, documentary film-maker Sarah Rodriguez immaculately captures the ravaging effects of land-mines, but at the same time, paying tribute to the memory and bravery of land-mine victims and survivors.

A decade later, what do we know about these survivors? After the war, after the genocide, after the amputation and the treaty, what do they dream of and what do they hope for?

All that and more, only on Check Out on Radio Singapore International.

I’m Michael Tan.

Sarah first tells me more about what inspired her to film a documentary detailing the ravaging effects of land-mines.

SR: Well, actually in started back in Montreal. There was a presentation done by some members of an NGO working to help land-mine survivors and I kept having the feeling that Canada wants to be a country that’s a leader in the fight against land-mines. Yet, Canadians speak a lot of the land-mines themselves and a lot about the deaths caused by land-mines. But there’re many countries that’re stuck with a lot of land-mine survivors which means a lot of social consequences for the country as well. For example, in the case of Cambodia, being the country with the most entities in the world, has big consequences for the economy and the development of the country itself. So I thought: there’s a subject there because it’s not just talking about small-arms, it’s talking about human consequences but actually, stories also of people who have survived land-mines and who are able ot take their life into their own hands.

Now the 10th anniversary of the Ottawa Treaty has just passed, and it’s an agreement that’s been signed by more than 154 countries calling for the complete ban and destruction of anti-personnel land-mines. What can you tell us, 10 years later, about land-mine victims and the physical, social as well as psychological challenges they’re currently facing?

SR: Well, that’s an interesting question because part of the interest of the documentary, this subject in itself, was actually the 10th anniversary. Because as you said, the treaty has been signed by so many countries, yet it’s the first international treaty that has an objective that’s aimed towards victims, because the treaty has three main objectives as you said: de-mining, destruction of land-mines, banning of land-mines but also helping land-mine survivors. The two first objectives: banning land-mines and destroying land-mines, have been in 10 years, very positive. Yet, land-mine survivors have been a little bit forgotten. Meaning that in most cases, they do receive prosthesis, that is when they do know that they can receive prosthesis, most of them don’t receive them, and when they do, some of them are stuck with poverty and depending on money because they cannot work anymore and if there is no social system to help them regain a positive and active life in society, most of them will actually sell their prosthesis to gain a little money and they’re back to starting point. So the 10th anniversary is a very good occasion to be able ot say that there is a third objective that shouldn’t be forgotten, which is to help land-mine survivors.

Now I understand that in shooting your documentary, you’ve met land-mine victims yourself. What do they dream of and what do they hope for?

SR: Well, I was very surprised. I was told by people who have seen the film that they think it’s actually funny in some parts and it’s not that I myself made the film funny but it’s because these characters that I have filmed are very optimistic about life. Optimistic because now they do have a role. I chose to film people not who have failed in regaining an active life but people who have really worked for themselves and for their own social rehabilitation and a lot of them, they’re very afraid for their own children of course, because they’re afraid that they will live through the same things, but a lot of them are really hoping for high expectations. I was really surprised to see some of them wanting to, for instance, there’s a volley-ball team that’s playing internationally and it’s one of the best sporting teams in Cambodia even though they are mostly people who have been disabled by land-mines and they just dream to be accepted as a normal person, normal human beings and most of them do achieve that through showing what they can do actively and positively in their communities.

Yeah, and I understand that these men and women have become real role models for their communities?

SR: Exactly, I’ve also filmed some women who have decided to take courses in repairing TVs and computers and of course there’s not a lot of women working in that field in Cambodia. And now, for three of them, being amputated meant not having a husband and not having a future. For many Cambodian women, having a future means having a family and actually two are married and one is going to be engaged because now that she has a job that’s really not a very typical female job, it raises new interest in the community as well. So that’s what I meant by role models or real heroes. These are people that are fighting enemies, that’s why the film is called “The Enemy Within”. They’re fighting enemies of social stigma, isolation and really trying to their best to regain an active and positive life.

So how does your film give voice to these thousands of land-mine victims?

SR: The third objective of the ban on land-mine treaty, the land-mine survivors, have mostly been forgotten. And from time to time, we hear NGOs speaking in the name of land-mine survivors but I was actually very surprised to see NGOs react to my documentary saying that they actually never really interviewed or never really spoke of such themes with land-mine survivors. So what I mean by giving voice is that they’re not usually able or they don’t have a podium to be able to say what they feel like. Most of them never talk about the fact that almost 60% of them try to commit suicide, so there are very big psychological consequences. There’s a lot of depression, alcoholism related to being amputated by a land-mine, but they don’t really get the chance to talk about the positive things they can do and so I wanted to give a voice to those who really decided that there are difficulties but they’re not the kind of people we usually depict them so they’re not land-mine victims but land-mine survivors. That’s the kind of message they want to put across. And that’s what I wanted to do. Give them a voice and make them able to say that they are survivors. Real-life survivors, real-life heroes.

And how has meeting these real-life heroes affected you on a personal level?

SR: In documentary filming, it’s very difficult not to have an emotional connection. Because, well first of all, you do get what we call, “into the bubble”, into the person’s intimacy and so you have to become kind of friends with these people for them to be able to talk about what they’re going through. But the emotional connection is, I think, very optimistic. Talking to you about the film, I’m having flashes of the people I’ve met and seriously, it’s a real-life lesson because I’ve never been so optimistic about what you can achieve in life until I had met these people and it’s not an exaggeration just for selling tickets to go see the show, haha, I mean that I was really driven by the humour, a lot of them had a very surprising humour about their own situation because they’ve had life so difficult and they were able ot pass through everything. Most of them valued especially knowledge and being optimistic about things. So I believe that maybe that’s what I get as a lesson. The lesson that I do get is you know, that there is always more to hope. You can always turn back and do something that you wouldn’t expect to do or people don’t expect. You can go and have, not necessarily what you want, it’s not their reality, but that if you really do want to change your life, you can always find something positive in it.

And that really puts things into perspective for all of us yeah… what more do you think needs to be done to ensure that children growing up around the world will one day run fearless through their lands and fields?

SR: Of course, well, I think the first thing is really raising awareness, but raising awareness not necessarily locally but internationally. In 1997, when people started talking about the land-mine ban treaty, there were Nobel Prizes around this, Princess Lady Diana got involved in the situation and for most of these countries, it was really a relief, because for instance in Cambodia, they were able to de-mine about 50% of the land, which is a big percentage. So in 10 years, most of it has been done in the first three to four years, where the international attention was at its highest. But now of course, it’s difficult to keep an attention internationally. There’re so many other situations in many different countries that need to be addressed, so of course there’s always a kind of a fatigue or awareness goes a little down and unfortunately, there’s lesser and lesser help and so for instance, in the situation in Cambodia, they have very little money to de-mine and even though there are awareness programmes in schools for instance to teach children to be aware, to watch out for the signs and not to go into fields they don’t know, it’s not the safest. The safest would be to really keep up with the de-mining as it was done in the first following years. Most countries have accepted that land-mines are a very threatening arm and that they mostly injure civilians, so it’s not a weapon of war, it’s really a weapon of destruction and they have accepted that and I think it would be good that countries that have signed the treaty would realize that it needs to be followed up, it needs to be addressed in the years to come.

And that was documentary film-maker Sarah Rodriguez, whose film “The Enemy Within” is now screening as part of the Singapore International Film Festival, and for Check Out on Radio Singapore International, I’m Michael Tan.

‘Til next week, stay safe and take care.

Woman fights against discrimination in Cambodia

Rachel Madden spent a ‘life-changing’ six weeks in Cambodia

28 March 2008
By Anna Dowdeswell
The Bucks Herald (UK)

AN Aylesbury woman who joined a Thame charity to raise awareness of the discrimination faced by disabled people in Cambodia has returned to the UK.

Rachel Madden, 35, spent a 'life-changing' six weeks working with three charities including The Cambodia Trust treating landmine survivors, fitting prosthetic limbs and braces and small business grant and school funding.

She also spent time in the country's capital Phnom Penh, watching people having prosthetic and orthopaedic limbs fitted and adjusted.

Another charity Rachel worked with was the Working for Children orphanage and centre for poor children in the Pouk district of Siem Pang in the north of Cambodia.

Established in January 2007, it homes 43 orphans/poor children, including schooling, a family unit.

She said: "I spent my time teaching basic English, crafts, sports, music and was able to support the orphanage by providing bicycles, rice and school uniforms."

She also worked in two schools, one in Battambang district in the west and Prey Chrouk in the south.

She taught English, painted classrooms and with the help of the IAM Foundation installed two water pumps.

"My time working with these NGO's has changed my life and settling back into corporate life in the UK has been difficult.

I have made some wonderful, long-lasting friendships, with both Khmers, particularly my 'family' in Battambang, and many ex-pats working in Cambodia.

"Cambodia is no longer just a holiday destination for me. I would love to have the opportunity to work out there for longer.

"Cambodia is quite simply my second home."

Cambodia: promoting economic security among victims of landmines

28-02-2008
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Despite the enormous efforts made during the past 12 years to rid Cambodia of the scourge of mines and other explosive remnants of war, several hundred people continue to be maimed or killed by these weapons in the country every year.

Promoting economic security among survivors and potential victims of landmine accidents

According to the Cambodian Mine Victim Information System, 80% of the victims in 2004 admitted they were aware of the danger. Nevertheless, they were forced to engage in risky pursuits (such as collecting scrap metal or clearing dangerous areas for farming) simply in order to survive.

Based on this finding, the Cambodian Red Cross Society started a micro-credit project in 2005 to support the economic integration at community level of amputees who would have carried on taking risks had an alternate form of income generation not been available. The scheme had 18 beneficiaries in 2005 and initial results were encouraging.

In 2006 the project was expanded so as to target not only economically vulnerable mine survivors but also so-called potential victims, i.e. people who take daily risks with mines and other lethal debris of war. The aim is to prevent or at least reduce the number of accidents by providing economic alternatives that allow people to avoid taking risks.

How the project works

The Cambodian Red Cross micro-credit project relies on community meetings – organized to provide information on the risks posed by mines – to identify economically vulnerable mine survivors and potential victims.

Those selected receive small loans (items worth up to 200 US dollars) enabling them to start generating an income (by raising pigs, farming, opening a shop, operating a water pump, etc.) sufficient to meet their basic needs. The type of activity depends on the recipient’s skills and motivation and on the needs in each village – the support given is agreed upon with community leaders. A contribution in kind is always made by the beneficiary or in some cases the community.

The project is managed on a revolving-fund basis. Its loans are interest-free, but beneficiaries must repay them in cash within 12 months. The length of the payback period depends on the type of business and on the beneficiaries’ circumstances. Repaid funds are immediately reinvested in the form of new loans to a new group of beneficiaries.

During the 12-month loan period, Cambodian Red Cross volunteers and development officers remain in close contact with beneficiaries in order to monitor progress, assess results and offer advice. With financial support from the German Red Cross, small loans were made to 80 people in 2006 and to around 200 in 2007.

Ongoing support for the disabled

• The ICRC has provided tecnical support to the Cambodia Red Cross' programme to reduce impact of mines and explosive remnants of war since 2006.
• The ICRC has been providing support for victims of mines and unexploded ordnance in Cambodia for years. This is done through the orthopaedic and rehabilitation centres in Kompong Speu and Battambang (in cooperation with the authorities) and the ICRC orthopaedic component factory in Phnom Penh. Services are provided to patients, including those suffering from disabling diseases, free of charge.

Landmines Cambodia

Seng (L) and Poiy (R). Soldiers often send children ahead to test for landmines. Poiy was one of these children. (Photo: Tony Hauser)

November 16, 2007
Katy Anderson
News Editor
Gauntlet Students' Newsletter (Univ. of Calgary, Canada)

When photographer Tony Hauser met a group of children in Cambodia who had been affected by landmines, he knew he had to show them to the world.

"I was so amazed that these kids, they had such dignity, such pride," said Hauser. "When I arrived they were playing soccer with one leg and crutches and no hands and I thought, 'these kids are amazing. This is like my own kids only they have missing body parts' and I was really struck by that."

Hauser explained he wanted his show his pictures so both his own children and young people in the country would know what it means to live in a world where three people a day step on a landmine.

"I was being very naive, in a way," he said. "Of course the world knew about it, I probably knew about it, I just never paid any attention to it."

The University of Calgary hosted a photo exhibit by Hauser Nov. 5-9. The photo exhibit had been travelling around universities across Canada in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the landmine ban treaty that was signed in Ottawa in 1997.

Then Government of Canada minister of external affairs Lloyd Axworthy invited world leaders to come to Ottawa to discuss, and hopefully ban the use of landmines. One hundred twenty-two countries signed the treating, excluding the U.S., Russia and China.

"They didn't sign on to the treaty so they are not being responsible in that respect to reducing the production and use of landmines," said Consortium for peace studies program director Kelly Dowdell. "It's still something that they use in the conflicts they are involved in."

Hauser noted that although there is no real estimate, experts say there are anywhere from 1-10 million landmines still in Cambodia alone.

"The dilemma with landmines is that if they were only supposed to protect an army of soldiers from the so-called enemy. That would be fine, but if they are not being dug out afterwards--and most of them are not--then they remain in the landscape for endless decades," said Hauser.

Hauser explained that regions from Africa to Eastern Europe have been influenced by the use of landmines.

"There are countries around the world that are affected by landmines, many of which were placed long before the people who are now affected by them are born," said Dowdell. "There isn't a continent that isn't touched by the landmines issue."

Hauser explained that he was talking to someone from the Canadian Landmines Association that said landmines would be removed by 2020, but noted he had talked to others who disagreed.

“It’s going to take maybe 50 years, other people say maybe a 100 more years to just get rid of all the landmines that are being made, not to speak of what’s being possibly produced and sold and traded now,” he said. “It’s not a perfect situation and therefore I think you cannot say this is going to be done in 15 years and so we don’t have to worry about it so much, I think we have to worry about it a lot because people get injured all the time.”

Dowdell explained the photos had an impact on her because of the subjects' similarity to ourselves.

"They are obviously shocking, that's part of the intent, they are very stark," said Dowdell. "Removing them from their environment and putting them in front of this big white sheet and photographing them alone obviously is a very powerful visual statement and then each of the photos is accompanied by a short description of each of the young people, there lives, how they were injured by landmines, how the effects of this decades long war affected their families and also it talks a bit about their dreams for the future."

Hauser noted his hope for the exhibit is that students will take the time and write a letter to their member of parliament to ask for landmines not to be forgotten.

Landmine victims put Cambodia on map

Kim Sorn (foreground), a land mine victim, warms up during a volleyball practice session at a Khien Khlang rehabilitation centre in Phnom Penh in this June 6, 2007 file photo. Sporting success is an impossible dream for most people in Cambodia, where poverty and the scars of civil war are part of daily life. But one group of athletes from the cash-strapped country are on their way to becoming world beaters. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea/Files

A prosthetic arm is seen as land mine victims take part in a volleyball practice at Khien Khlang rehabilitation centre in Phnom Penh in this June 6, 2007 file photo. Sporting success is an impossible dream for most people in Cambodia, where poverty and the scars of civil war are part of daily life. But one group of athletes from the cash-strapped country are on their way to becoming world beaters. REUTERS/Chor Sokunthea/Files

Tuesday Jun 26 2007
AAP

Sporting success is an impossible dream for most people in Cambodia, where poverty and the scars of civil war are part of daily life.

But one group of athletes from the cash-strapped country are on their way to becoming world beaters.

They are not celebrities or highly-paid professionals, but former fighters in a brutal conflict who lost limbs to landmines and unexploded bombs.

Cambodia's disabled men's volleyball team are the champions of the Asia-Pacific region and have risen to number five in the world rankings.

"These guys are seriously fit, they really know how to work hard, and they work with their prosthesis," said Australian Christopher Minko, who has been involved in disabled volleyball in Cambodia for more than a decade.

"In this country, disabled people have to stand up on their own. Hopefully, we can push this team to be number one in the world," he told Reuters.

Since Minko started a national volleyball league for amputees, his teams have won gold at the 2002 FESPIC Games - Asia's equivalent of the Paralympics - and climbed up the world rankings.

Slowly emerging from decades of civil war including the 1970s Khmer Rouge "killing fields" genocide, Cambodia is littered with an estimated 6 million landmines, leaving it with one of the world's highest disability rates.

The league's 160 players are among some 40,000 "chonpika", or amputees, in Cambodia where one in every 290 people have been permanently disabled by landmines.

Although they fought on opposing sides during three decades of civil war, San Mao and Som Chak are team mates who have put their grim past behind them.

"We are the victims of the war, but we are friends now," said San Mao, a former Khmer Rouge guerilla who has a prosthetic leg after stepping on a mine while transporting munitions.

"When we chat, we chat for fun. We skip all the bad things."

Som Chak, 43, lost his right leg fighting the Khmer Rouge along the Thai-Cambodia border. He turned to sport to become part of a community.

"My friends in the hospital told me 'look around you, many people lost legs too, so move on,'" he said.

"I didn't want people to laugh at me because I couldn't do anything. I don't want anyone to insult us."

Som Chak said he hoped their success could raise awareness about landmines to prevent more of his people from becoming victims.

"My message to mine-producing countries is stop this," said Som Chak.

"I don't want more people to lose their legs like us."

In November, Cambodia will stage the World Organisation for Volleyball Disabled's (WOVD) Phnom Penh World Cup, which will be the first time the country has hosted a global sports event.

The tournament will be presided over by the kingdom's long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who lost an eye in the final assault on Phnom Penh in 1975.

The Cambodian strongman is a keen golfer and volleyball player, and regards himself as a disabled athlete.

Volleyball for amputees is catching on in Cambodia, with 17 clubs taking part in the national league.

There is even a team comprised entirely of ex-Khmer Rouge rebels in Anlong Veng, the final resting place of "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, the architect of the 1970s "Year Zero" revolution, which claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives in four years.

Chim Phan, 39, said sport is his passion and he will not let his disability get in the way of his success.

"I love sport, it makes my body strong," said Chim Phan, who competes in a number of sports events, including marathons.

"If I don't play, it's like I'm sick."