Cambodia takes thousands of bullets, bombs from scrap merchants

Wed, 09 Jan 2008
DPA

Phnom Penh - Cambodian authorities have confiscated 6,000 bullets and more than 1,000 bombs and grenades from scrap collectors near the Thailand border, authorities said Wednesday. Police chief for O'Chrou district in Banteay Meanchey province, Ung Song Yue, said by telephone that raids on at least seven scrap metal merchants had netted the dangerous haul but the operation was still not complete.

"We will conduct an inventory Thursday but the total is likely to go higher," he said. "Cambodian scrap collectors sometimes think about money to eat with now more than their future."

An official with the Cambodian Mine Action Center, which is helping police with their work, agreed that the haul would probably be much higher than the 7,000 weapons and unexploded ordinance currently collected.

Cambodia is still recovering from a 30-year civil war and remains littered with unexploded bombs and bullets, which contain valuable metals, including copper, and provide collectors with lucrative incomes.

However, the death toll amongst scrap collectors is high and police said they feared the consequences of keeping large stashes of old and potentially unstable weapons in residential areas. Banteay Meanchey, home to several former Khmer Rouge strongholds, was the site of heavy fighting until just over a decade ago.

Gov’t officials not concerned about villagers scavenging plane debris to sell as scrap metal

Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by Socheata

Following a report indicating that villagers are scavenging debris of the plane that crashed (in Kampot province) to sell to scrap metal dealers, government officials and an official from PMT Air claimed that they are not concerned about the villagers scavenging plane debris to sell. Khuoy Khun Huor, the deputy governor of the province of Kampot said that the villagers are carting off the plane metallic debris to sell as scrap metal, but he said that he is not concerned about this, as all the (investigation) work has already been completed. Khuoy Khun Huor told The Cambodia Daily that there is no need to investigate further on the plane carcass because it is no longer important. Eng Suosdey, the deputy secretary of state of the civil aviation department, also said that the plane carcass is no longer important, what his department needed was the plane’s black box only in order to find out the cause of the crash. Sar Sareth, president of PMT Air, the company that operates the crashed plane, said that he is happy to see the villagers carting off with the plane debris because it avoided his company from paying to clean up the site by itself. He said that the remainder of the plane is more valuable to the villagers than it is to his company.

Downed PMT Air plane is hacked into pieces by villagers for sale as scrap metal

The leftover engine of the plane which crashed in Kampot province (Photo: Neay Keb, Koh Santepheap newspaper)

Monday, August 6, 2007
Everyday.com.kh
Translated from Khmer by KI-Media

According to a report by the Koh Santepheap newspaper, the plane which carried South Korean passengers and crashed in Kampot province over one month ago, has been hacked down into pieces and carted off by the villagers, the only things remaining now are two plane tires and the engine only. The tires and engine are too heavy to be removed, everything else has been taken away already. The report indicated that hundreds of villagers hacked and sawed off pieces of the plane located in the middle of the forest on a rocky mountain. Some villagers took the plane ladder, some collected aluminum, others took away electric wires, and scattered plane parts, the villagers worked tirelessly day and night to cart off these pieces to sell as scrap metal to scrap dealers in Veal Renh commune. Kong Chun, the Prek Kranh village chief, told Koh Santepheap that, shortly after the plane crash, there was a lot of soldiers guarding the site. Kong Chun said that he thought it was the soldiers who took away all the plane pieces, but it turned out that it was the villagers who went into the forest to collect the metal pieces, day and night, for 20 days before the operation quieted down. The village chief said that, based on what he knows, villagers from 4 communes in Sihanoukville municipality who participated in the dismantling of the downed plane.

Four Held For Moving Artillery Shells

Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
31 July 2007

Four men were detained Tuesday after police found them transporting more than 200 old artillery shells toward Phnom Penh.

They were not trafficking the shells, police said, but planned to sell them as scrap.

Lt. Gen. Sok Phal, national police deputy chief for security, said police stopped the vehicle transporting the 105-mm and 130-mm shells on its way from kilometer No. 6 to the capital's Stung Meanchey district Tuesday.

The shells were dragged from river bottoms and were to be sold for scrap, Sok Phal said.

"The shells are not tied to anything," he said. "There is nothing to it."

Land mine education fails to deter poor metal scavengers from dangerous trade

Friday, February 23, 2007
The Associated Press

SEP VILLAGE, Cambodia: Cambodians mark Feb. 24 as Land Mine Awareness Day, a grim reminder of their country's war-torn past but a symbol of hope for fighting a deadly scourge.

Meetings and speeches were set for Saturday to drive home the message that, although the country's decades of war and civil conflict ended eight years ago, their brutal legacy remains in the form of land mines and unexploded ordnance, or UXO.

For at least several hundred poverty-beset Cambodian villagers, however, that legacy represents a livelihood.

Armed with homemade metal detectors, they risk injury and death to comb rice fields and hillsides — some littered with mines or bombs — for pieces of scrap metal they can sell.

An estimated 4 million to 6 million mines and other pieces of unexploded ordnance remain buried in Cambodia. Land Mine Awareness Day was established in 2000 to highlight the problem.

Mines killed or maimed at least 418 people last year, according to Khem Sophoan, director general of the government's land mine clearing agency, the Cambodian Mine Action Center or CMAC.

The Land Mine Risk/UXO Risk Education project of the Cambodian Red Cross hopes to reduce the number of victims to 200 by 2010, and to zero by 2012.

But good intentions cannot overcome the lack of economic opportunities that drives men like Chong Nhep, 29, to hunt for this dangerous buried treasure with a metal detector and a hoe.

Watching him work is unnerving. Alerted by the detector, he digs with his hoe and finds the broken tail of a mortar shell.

Picking it up with his bare hand, he tosses it into his bag and calmly carries on scanning the ground.

"I usually don't know if it is a land mine, bomb or unexploded ordnance," he said. "But one thing I am sure of is there must be some metal."

If lucky, he said, he can collect 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of scrap metal a day; on a bad day he might fetch 2 kilograms (4 pounds).

One kilogram (2.2 pounds) of scrap steel sells for 1,000 riel (US$0.25; €0.20), but aluminum and bronze pieces fetch 3,000 riel (US$0.75; €0.60) and 5,000 riel (US$1.2; €0.90) respectively.

"This is a very dangerous occupation that we have constantly tried to prevent," said CMAC's Khem Sophoan. He said scavengers often try to evade authorities.

Nonetheless, a cottage industry has developed to produce metal detectors.

At Sep village, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the capital, Phnom Penh, 35-year-old Sem Seng has turned his radio repair shop into a lucrative business by making the detectors. He has sold about 300 in the past four years.

"I first did not know how to make (metal detectors), until one day a scavenger brought a broken detector to my shop and asked me to fix it," he said, sitting by a wooden desk strewn with radio parts and repair tools.

Wearing only a loincloth over his underpants, he spoke without taking his eyes off a detector he was assembling.

"In this area, I am the only person who can produce it," he said.

A detector is made of locally available material, including used radio parts. It consists of a plastic handle connected to an aluminum hoop, which is wired to a transmitter box. The box is attached to an amplifier that sends a signal to a headphone.

It runs on four flashlight batteries and sells for about 100,000 riel (US$25; €19).

Khem Sophoan said that such business is illegal, and that local authorities have been asked to crack down on it.

Sem Seng said police regularly visit his shop — but only to collect payoffs to turn a blind eye to his business.

"As long as the people still collect scrap metal, I still keep the production going because there are a lot of poor people, and their job is collecting metal," he said.

Chong Nhep, the scrap hunter, said police used to confiscate his detector but would return it for a bribe of 50,000 riel (US$12; €9).

At a nearby village, Hap Mat, 38, recalled how he had been scavenging in 2003, when his hoe hit a bomb fuse and triggered an explosion.

He was wounded in his right arm and thigh. A friend nearby was wounded in the abdomen, while another lost sight in one eye and had to have one of his arms amputated.

"Since that day I swore with my life that I will never scavenge for metal again," Hap Mat said.

Still, the potential rewards remain hard to resist.

"I don't think I can find another better job than to be a scrap metal collector," said father of four Chuk Sok Khoy, 28.

Without any safety measures or protective gear, he asks a spirit to safeguard him each morning before he goes scavenging.

One day about three years ago, he thought his lucky day had arrived when his detector emitted a particularly strong signal.

"I thought I found a huge treasure. But after I dug it up, I saw a very big B-52 bomb," he said. Disappointed, he walked away from the find.