Early in the morning on Wednesday 17 June, we headed to Rottanak Mondul, a district with one of the highest mine/ERW casualty rates in Cambodia.
Our first stop was at minefield 8270 in Chambak village, which
CMAC was demining using manual teams, mine detection dogs, and a brushcutter machine. Before we got started, the platoon leader gave the required safety briefing and site-specific information. From 1991 to 1997, the Khmer Rouge used the area as a military base, and two deaths and three injuries have been recorded on the 20 hectare field. The minefield was designated to be cleared through Cambodia’s community-oriented mine clearance prioritization process so that 36 families could safely use the land for farming.
Next, everyone donned personal protective equipment and headed over to watch a demonstration of manual demining (on cleared land). Since no one was actually going to walk on a live demining site, personal protective equipment wasn’t required, but it was good to experience firsthand how hot and uncomfortable the heavy plastic helmets and kevlar body covers are.
The manual deminers demonstrated the long, slow process of clearing brush, using a metal detector to find potential mines, and carefully unearthing the objects to see if they are mines. To give you an idea of how time-consuming the process is, 45 anti-personnel mines, seven explosive remnants of war, one anti-tank mine – and 760,000 pieces of scrap metal have been found so far. Since each item has to be treated as if it were an explosive, this process takes an incredibly long time.
After seeing how the mines are found using mine detection dogs (who sniff out the TNT in areas with low contamination) and 32-ton bruschutter machines (that cut away large amounts of jungle), we headed over to watch a controlled detonation of mines and ERW found on the minefield that morning.
Tor Vutha was asked to do the honors, which involves pushing a button with an electric charge connected to the pile of mines and ERW. First everyone exited the minefield and stood at a safe distance (per the Cambodian Mine Action Standards), then a CMAC deminer called out on a loudspeaker in all directions to tell people to move away from the minefield, and finally he shouted “Moy, Pea, Buy!” followed by a deafening BOOM!!!
Click
here to see and hear the explosion.
Even from hundreds of meters away, the explosions are pretty scary. Once it was over, everyone laughed nervously and clapped. The team usually carries out these controlled detonations twice a day, once before lunch, and once before they leave for the day.
Before the 35 deminers broke for lunch, we sat down to chat with six female deminers and learn why they decided to enter this profession.
All six began working as village-based deminers, meaning they were recruited to demine in their village, and now work in manual clearance. They all said they felt completely safe because they were well trained, and that they decided to do it for their livelihoods and to help their communities.
An artist asked the women how they felt about giving up wearing fancy clothes and make-up to work in a dangerous and dirty minefield, and one of the women provided a beautiful response, saying that her demining efforts were contributing to good karma, which is more important than clothes and make-up.
On that note, we piled into the cars and headed off to meet with people living on cleared land.
