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Waging
a battle for life with bare hands These people are so desperate and depend on cultivation for their livelihood that they say they cannot wait for the army or an NGO to do the job for them. Some farmers have already cleared their own lands of mines and have planted onions and vegetables. However, this crude and unsafe method of clearing mines has proved harmful to the people themselves, as some of the unearthed mines are thrown to adjoining plots of land. In some instances farmers remove the explosives from the mines and sell them to fishermen who use them for mid and deep-sea fishing. Describing
their pathetic plight a farmer said, “our only means of survival
is cultivation. But these plots of land have mines buried beneath
and many farmers have become victim to them while trying to cultivate
the land.” The accidents occurred either when trying to clear the mines or by stepping on them inadvertently. Thirupalan, a villager in Theriddy lost both his legs to an anti personnel mine while cultivating his own block of land. His wife Jandanee is now compelled to do hard labour to feed her five children and disabled husband. “My children are four, five, seven, ten and twelve years old. Two of them go to school and I earn only Rs. 150 a day and all of us have to survive on this meagre income,” she lamented. In addition to land mines grenades also pose a threat to civilians especially children. Thirteen-year-old Naganathan, a victim of a grenade explosion still has a piece of shrapnel in his head which is too dangerous to be removed. Describing the incident he said, “I was gathering firewood along with another friend when the accident happened. My friend found the grenade and wanted to get the explosive out of it. I tried to stop him but he wanted to see what was inside. The pin would not come out so he smashed it on the ground. Next there was a loud explosion and I lay unconscious in a pool of blood. I also lost my left eye.” Loud noises and the colour of red still frightens Naganathan. His injuries still give him a lot of pain and he has still not gone back to school after the incident. Edward Rowe, the programme manager of Halo Trust, a British humanitarian mine clearing agency involved in mine-clearing operations in Jaffna said about 437, 541sq metres of land have been cleared of deadly mines. He said as soon as the areas are cleared of mines the farmers block out the lands and start cultivating. Outlining the dangers to villagers themselves clearing the mines he said, “Some farmers throw the unearthed mines to already cleared areas and other blocks of land when they de-mine without supervision. This has posed a problem to our de-mining programme. Some of the villagers also remove the sticks used to indicate the borders of demarcated minefields for firewood. “Commenting on their de-mining programme, Mr. Rowe said about 180, 000 sq metres of land have been cleared of mines with the aid of machines while agricultural fields have to be cleared manually as the machines in the process of clearing mines also dig out the fertile top soil. He said this has proved to be very time consuming. Mr. Rowe said so far the agency has removed 38,786 anti personnel mines and 19 anti tank mines from Jaffna. The lack of properly demarcated maps of the minefields was another problem they faced, he said. He also said that they co-ordinated work and shared information with the army and a Danish de-mining group. However, he said they get very little assistance from the LTTE, when it came to demining operations. “All they do is to inform us to discontinue work when they organise a hartal in the area. The LTTE mines which are laid in an ad hoc manner especially near wells and other public places are hard to detect,” Mr. Rowe said. He also stressed the importance of funding to sustain the de-mining programme . “For 2005 the European Commission has granted us Euros 800, 000 which has helped us tremendously,” he said. Since Sri Lanka has not signed the Ottawa Treaty that bans anti-personnel mines nor the Conventional Weapons Convention, which has a protocol on landmines, foreign organisations are reluctant to fund the de-mining projects in the country. |
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