It doesn’t spare anyone – man, woman, child or animal. It is a problem device with indiscriminate and devastating effects.
Most of its victims are at the peak of their lives, men between 18 and 35 years of age who have to go out to work such as farming, while children unwittingly may pick up this device out of curiosity, thinking it is something to play with.
Then there is a blast and if the victim is not dead, he or she is left with terrible disabilities.
This is the tragic legacy in a country which has been using anti-personnel landmines to fight an internal conflict. These anti-personnel landmines are munitions designed to explode from the presence, proximity or contact of a person.
“Taking into consideration the potential threat to civilians who are moving in and out of areas which may be mined, the time is right for the Government of Sri Lanka to accede to the Mine Ban Treaty,” urges landmine researcher Prasanna Kuruppu as March 1 comes round.
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| A 13-year-old victim of a mine blast. Pic courtesy UNICEF |
It was on March 1, 1999 that the Mine Ban Treaty came into force, having been opened for signature two years earlier, in Ottawa, Canada, after a strong and determined reaction by international civil society led by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).
Although 156 countries are parties to the treaty, 39 countries including Sri Lanka remain outside it while many non-state armed groups still produce or use anti-personnel mines, according to the ICBL.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are strongly suspected to be a major culprit among the “non-state armed groups”, it is learnt, and in Sri Lanka, ‘Jony’ is what the deadly anti-personnel mine is euphemistically called.
The Landmine Monitor, in its country-by-country report for 2008 states that Sri Lankan security forces used anti-personnel mines in 2007 and 2008, quoting “knowledgeable sources that wish to remain anonymous including those engaged in mine action activities in the field” as alleging.
Landmine Monitor is the research and monitoring initiative of ICBL and the de facto monitoring regime for the Mine Ban Treaty.
The report explains that although Landmine Monitor is not able to confirm the allegations it considers this the first serious charge of use of anti-personnel mines by government forces since the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement. A Foreign Ministry representative and an army representative denied the allegations. The army representative had said it was disinformation spread by the LTTE who were themselves using landmines, the report says.
With regard to the LTTE, Landmine Monitor states that from the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002 until mid-2006, no confirmed reports of use of anti-personnel mines by the LTTE, other than command-detonated Claymore-type devices, were received.
It states: “Since May 2006, the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has repeatedly accused the LTTE of planting anti-personnel mines. The army has reported encountering newly-laid mines and capturing newly-manufactured mines containing a high explosive charge and a battery mechanism – a modified version of the Jony 99 mine earlier produced by the LTTE. In March 2008, an SLA officer told Landmine Monitor the army was encountering a modified Rangan 99 type anti-personnel mine produced by the LTTE which has an electronic anti-handling feature.
“In the past, the LTTE produced several types of anti-personnel mines: Jony 95 (a small wooden box mine), Rangan 99 or Jony 99, SN 96 (a Claymore-type mine) and some variants of these. The LTTE has also manufactured anti-vehicle mines including the Amman 2000 and is considered expert in making explosive weapons.
Since 2003, the Swiss NGO Geneva Call has organized programmes seeking to engage the LTTE in a public pledge to a landmine ban, according to the Landmine Monitor. In October 2006, the LTTE denied to Geneva Call that it had engaged in any new use of mines but has not made any statements regarding use in 2007 or 2008, the Landmine Monitor adds.
Explains Mr. Kuruppu that joining the treaty entails among other activities destroying millions of stockpiled anti-personnel mines and ensuring that they can never be planted again. Mr. Kuruppu is a former Sri Lanka Air Force officer now heavily involved in landmine research for the Landmine Monitor.
As the world readies for the treaty’s Second Review Conference in November this year in Colombia, the view is that although the road ahead may still be long, achieving a mine-free world is a “Mission Possible”.
That’s why Mr. Kuruppu’s plea to Sri Lanka is timely: Accede and save civilians from a terrible fate that will leave them maimed and mutilated.
Positive steps
There are indications that the Sri Lankan government supports the Mine Ban Treaty, although previously it has stated that accession was dependent on progress in the peace process and linked its position on accession to agreement by the LTTE to foreswear use of the weapon, The Sunday Times understands.
Sri Lanka in 2008 once again voted in favour of the annual UN General Assembly Resolution which supports the Mine Ban Treaty and the total ban on anti-personnel landmines, as it has done sine 1996, it is learnt.
The other positive pointers from the Landmine Monitor Report 2008 are that:
- Sri Lanka provided a voluntary Article 7 report in 2005. It subsequently indicated it would provide an update, but has not yet done so. (Article 7 of the Mine Ban Treaty deals with the submission of an annual report on the status of landmines in each country.)
- In February 2008, Sri Lanka sent a military officer to the Ottawa Convention Implementation and Universalization Workshop in Bali, Indonesia. He told the ICBL that given the current state of the conflict in Sri Lanka, it was not a time for the army to be thinking about accession. But, he said, it could happen in future years.
- Sri Lanka is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines. It attended the Ninth Annual Conference of States Parties to the protocol in Geneva in November 2007 but has not submitted an annual Article 13 report.
However, Sri Lanka did not attend as an observer either the Eighth Meeting of States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in November 2007 or the June 2008 intersessional Standing Committee meetings. Sri Lanka also did not attend the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions in May 2008. |
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