Published on: 24/11/2024 – 08:46Amended: 24/11/2024 – 08:42

1 minute

Participants, including landmine victims and mine clearance workers, repeatedly chanted “a world without mines” during the four-kilometre march around Siem Reap’s famous temple complex.

The march took place a day before a conference against landmines in Cambodia, which is full of unexploded ordnance left over from the civil war.

Hundreds of delegates are expected in Siem Reap to assess progress under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, to which neither Russia nor the United States is a party.

The march and conference come after Washington announced this week that it would send landmines to Ukraine, a major policy shift immediately criticized by human rights advocates.

In Cambodia, where remnants of the civil war continue to claim lives and maim people, landmine victims told AFP they fear the losses that could result from the move.

“There will be other victims like me,” said Horl Pros, a former soldier who lost his right leg to a landmine in 1984.

“I’m sad and shocked.”

Washington says it has asked kyiv to commit to using mines on its own territory and only in unpopulated areas to reduce risks to civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines “very important” to stop Russian attacks.

Asked about the supply of US mines to Ukraine, Vice Chairman of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority Ly Thuch said: “We regret that all countries and people continue to use landmines. Landmines are not good for our humanity. “.

After nearly three decades of civil war since the 1960s, Cambodia has become one of the most bombed and mined countries in the world.

About 20,000 people have been killed there by landmines and unexploded ordnance since 1979, and twice as many have been injured.

“I think it’s fundamentally wrong to have a weapon that has a long-term effect on the civilian population,” Chris Moon, a former British army officer who lost an arm, told AFP. and a leg in 1995 while clearing mines in Mozambique. Siem Reap.

© 2024 AFP