Landmines and unexploded munitions claimed more victims in Myanmar than in any other country last year, a monitor said yesterday, warning the true toll could be double or triple its estimate of 1,000 people killed or wounded.
Decades of sporadic conflict between the military and ethnic rebel groups have left the Southeast Asian country littered with deadly landmines and munitions.
However, the military’s ouster of then-Burmese state councilor Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 has turbocharged conflict in the country and birthed dozens of newer “People’s Defence Forces” (PDFs) now battling to topple the military. Anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war killed or wounded 1,003 people in Myanmar last year, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said.
Photo: AFP
There were 933 landmine casualties in Syria, 651 in Afghanistan and 580 in Ukraine, it said in its latest Landmine Monitor report.
With conflict and other restrictions in Myanmar making ground surveys impossible, the true casualty figure was likely far higher than reported, the ICBL’s Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan said.
“How many more? Double? Triple? Quite possibly... There’s no medical surveillance system in the country that can provide official data in any manner or form,” he told a news conference in Bangkok.
“No armed group in Myanmar, not the military, not any of the ethnic armed groups, not the PDFs have provided us with any data on the number of casualties they have,” he said. “And we know from anecdotal evidence that it’s massive.”
Myanmar is not a signatory to the UN convention that prohibits the use, stockpiling or development of anti-personnel mines.
The ICBL said there has been a “significant increase” of anti-personnel mines use by the military over the past few years, including around infrastructure like mobile phone towers and energy pipelines.
Such infrastructure is often targeted by opponents of the military.
Myanmar’s military has been repeatedly accused of atrocities and war crimes during decades of internal conflict.
The ICBL said it had seen evidence of junta troops forcing civilians to walk in front of its units to “clear” mine-affected areas.
It said it had reviewed photos that indicated supplies of anti-personnel mines manufactured by Myanmar were captured by the military’s opponents every month from January 2022 and September “in virtually every part of the country.”
More than 3 million people have been displaced in Myanmar by the post-coup conflict, according to the UN.
All sides in the fighting were using landmines “indiscriminately,” the UN children’s agency said in April.
Rebel groups have said they also lay mines in some areas under their control.
The ICBL said at least 5,757 people had been casualties of landmines and explosive remnants of war across the world last year, 1,983 of whom were killed.
Civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded casualties, it said.
Last year’s figures are considerably higher than 2022, when the ICBL recorded at least 4,710 casualties, including 1,661 fatalities.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS