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.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
New Zealand is open to expanding its frigate fleet beyond its current two vessels, with New Zealand Minister of Defence Chris Penk saying “no options are off the table” as the government weighs buying new warships from Japan or the UK. The government yesterday said it is looking to replace its two aging Anzac-class frigates, which were both commissioned almost 30 years ago. The UK’s Type 31 and Japan’s Mogami-class warships are the options under consideration. Speaking in an interview, Penk said there is potential to increase the number of frigates the nation purchases. “We need a certain amount of capability as a
The Philippine Coast Guard yesterday said it deployed aircraft to issue radio warnings to a Chinese research ship in a disputed area of the South China Sea “swarming” with vessels from Beijing’s so-called maritime militia. The research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 33 (向陽紅33), which is capable of supporting submersible craft, was operating near a reef in the contested Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), which Taiwan also claims, the Philippine Coast Guard said. The Chinese ship was deploying a service boat toward the Spratly’s Iroquois Reef on Wednesday when it was spotted by a coast guard plane, “confirming ongoing unauthorized [marine scientific research]
RSS