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.
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