Cluster Bomb Kills Vietnamese Farmer

Ngoc Chinh was simply trying to earn some extra money. The effort cost him his life.
The 49-year-old farmer had been hired to dig holes where trees would be planted in the Hai Lang District of Quang Tri Province. Most of his family was away from home attending the wedding of a relative. Chinh had stayed behind with his daughter who had classes to attend.

On Nov. 24, Chinh left home early, taking his lunch along so he could spend more time working in the forestry area of Hai Lam Commune. His daughter went to class in the morning, did her homework in the afternoon, then prepared dinner and waited for her father to return.

By 10 p.m. when Chinh still had not arrived home, the girl became worried and ran to the neighbors to ask for help. Several men went with flashlights in search of Chinh.
They found him dead on the plot where he had been working. The steel blade of his hoe had been destroyed by the blast from a cluster bomb, the remains of which were also found on the site.

When staff from Clear Path International, a nonprofit organization that assists victims of war-era explosives, visited the family's home, Chinh's body had already been placed in a coffin. His daughter and friends were waiting for Chinh's mother, wife and two other children to return home before holding the funeral.

The accident that took Chinh's life occurred less than two weeks after delegates, diplomats and aid workers from around the globe met in neighboring Lao PDR to further their attempts to eradicate cluster munitions.

The First Meeting of Sates Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions was held in the capital city, Vientiane, from Nov. 9 to 12. To date, 108 countries have signed the treaty, which establishes international law to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions and mandates their destruction.

Heavy Bombing Campaign in Lao Leaves Scars, Live Munitions

Xieng Khuang Province, Lao PDR - Looking down from a window of our airplane, I see that the lush green landscape of the high plateau is pockmarked with brown craters, still empty of vegetation more than 30 years after they were made.

These are the scars of the U.S. government's nine-year-long "secret" bombing campaign over this small, landlocked country that borders Vietnam to the east. U.S. bombing records show that over 20,000 missions involving the release of roughly 46 million cluster munitions occurred over Xieng Khuang Province.

The area was of strategic importance as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, used by North Vietnamese forces with the consent of Lao revolutionary forces to send supplies and personnel around the de-militarized zone in central Vietnam, cut through Xieng Khuang's forests and mountains.

Six groups of foreign delegates, diplomats and representatives from international nonprofit organizations visited the province and a number of unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance sites during the recent First Meeting of Sates Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions in Vientiane, the capital of Lao PDR. Three of us from Clear Path International, myself as communications director, our executive director and the manager of a program we're starting here in Laos, were among the visitors.


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CPI is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that provides medical and socio-economic assistance to UXO survivors, their families and their communities in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan. In Laos, we are partnering with the Lao Women's Union to provide low-interest loans to female heads of households in Xieng Khuang Province to finance home-based businesses.

Our funding for this and other programs comes from the U.S. Department of State Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement. During the convention, there was a good deal of discussion in side events about the United States not being a signatory to the convention, which establishes international law to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions and mandates their destruction. To date, 108 countries have adopted the convention.

And while the US was without official representation, officials from the embassy here did attend many of the workshops. In September 2008, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the US has not participated in the convention because there are no good substitute munitions and that the "elimination of cluster munitions from our stockpiles would put the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk."

Under the current policy issued by the Department of Defense in 2008, by the end of 2018 the US will no longer use cluster munitions with more than a 1 percent chance of not exploding upon impact. Of the estimated 3 million tons of bombs dropped on Lao soil, about a third failed to go off when dropped. They continue to claim lives, usually those of Lao children, long after the fighting ended.

It is the hope of the Cluster Munition Coalition, an international civil society campaign working to eradicate these weapons, and other INGOs including ours that the US will eventually join the treaty and ban their use altogether. President Barack Obama's administration has not yet conducted a review of U.S. policy on cluster munitions, but Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) along with 14 other members of the Senate have written to the president, urging him to conduct a thorough review of the national policy on the weapons.

The US has acknowledged use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan in 2002 and in Iraq in 2003. In June 2010, Amnesty International reported that it appears the US used cluster munitions in an attack on an alleged al-Qa 'ida training camp in Yemen in December 2009, but neither the US nor Yemeni governments have responded publicly to the Amnesty International allegations.

Despite unwillingness by the US to completely abandon use of cluster munitions, it reportedly has been and will continue to be the largest contributor to UXO clearance and victim assistance here in Laos, having spent $51 million to date. In 2010, the US will have spent $5.1 million on UXO efforts by the year's end, an amount that is expected to increase to $7 million for 2011.

During the visit to one of several clearance sites in Xieng Khuang, CPI staff and others witnessed - from a safe distance - the detonation of 36 cluster bombs. The blasts, timed to go off within minutes of each other, sent enormous plumes of smoke, dirt, stones and shrapnel into the pale blue sky and the explosions echoed off the surrounding hills.

Each time, I felt a thud deep in my chest. At one point, I exhaled deeply, not realizing I had been holding my breath, thankful that no lives had been lost, no injuries sustained - this time.

On Basketballs and Bombs

Lao PDR - I am on a basketball court in Vientiane. The shouts of the players and the cheers from onlookers bounce off the walls of the brightly lit gym as we race between baskets, dribbling, passing, shooting - all from our wheelchairs.



I am not disabled but the special sports chair I am strapped into levels the playing field for those among us who are physically impaired. In theory. In reality, the field is anything but level. The disabled players who have practiced and competed here at the National Rehabilitation Centre (NRC) are much more adept at the sport of wheelchair basketball, which demands an athletic stamina and dexterity that many of us guest participants have never known and will never acquire.

The makeup of our audience is as unusual as that of the two teams on the court. In suits and ties and other evening attire, foreign diplomats and representatives from international humanitarian organizations - including my own U.S.-based nonprofit, Clear Path International - have come via multiple buses from many hotels throughout Lao's capital city to visit programs run by the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise, or COPE, in partnership with the NRC.

This is just one of many side events offered at the First Meeting of States Parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It is appropriate that the four-day conference (Nov. 9-12) is being held in the country most heavily bombed during the Vietnam War, a country that more than three decades later has the largest cluster munitions problem in the world.

Roughly 3 million tons of bombs were dropped on Lao soil, the majority of which were cluster munitions. It's estimated that a third of those failed to explode on impact and lay dormant, sometimes for many years, until disturbed by a curious child, farmer or other villager. Thousands of people have been killed or maimed here since 1963 and unexploded ordnance (UXO) continue to claim about 300 Lao lives each year. About half of all victims are children who discover the ball-shaped cluster munitions or "bombies" while playing near their rural villages.

Clear Path International, which provides medical and socio-economic assistance to UXO victims, their families and their communities in other Southeast Asian Countries and in Afghanistan, is just beginning a new program in Lao PDR with funding from the U.S. Department of State Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement. So the conference has provided a perfect introduction for myself and four others from CPI to the ongoing and unmet needs of people here, and to the programs already helping war victims reclaim their dignity, health and economic security.

The meeting brings together state parties to the treaty, United Nations agencies, international organizations, civil society and cluster bomb survivors to lay the groundwork for implementing the convention adopted two years ago and translating its objectives into action. The convention establishes international law to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions and mandates their destruction.

On May 30, 2008, following negotiations in Dublin, 107 states adopted the convention. That same year, 94 governments signed the treaty in Oslo. Early this year, the convention achieved a milestone when the 30th ratification was deposited at the UN, triggering its entry into force on Aug. 1, when it became binding international law.

As of this posting, with the current meeting still in progress, 108 countries had signed and 43 of those had taken the next step and ratified the convention, becoming state parties legally bound by its provisions.

While the United States is not a signatory, it has spent millions of dollars clearing unexploded ordnance and providing support services for victims in numerous countries. CPI programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, along the Thai-Burma border, in Afghanistan, and now in Lao PDR have been made possible by such funding.

And the five of us here in Lao on behalf of CPI, our executive director, myself as communications director, and program managers from the countries in which we work are proud to participate in this historic event. I know my colleagues took great pleasure in documenting my own performance on the basketball court, in dress pants and pumps no less.

Seattle Man to Run 300K for Landmine Victims

A Seattle physical therapist will compete in one of the toughest footraces on the planet while raising funds to help landmine accident survivors.

Wolfgang Brolley, who also is a chocolatier, business owner and circus arts practitioner, will participate in the eight-day, multinational GORE-TEX Transalpine-Run in which 250 teams of two people each cover 300 kilometers, gain 60,000 feet of elevation and pass through three countries (Germany, Austria and Italy) all on mountain trails through the Alps. This hard-running challenge begins Sept. 4 and will be completed in seven stages and one mountain sprint.

Brolley's cause, Running Cuz They Can't!, asks sponsors to donate money to non-profit organizations that assist landmine and bomb victims. One of the organizations that sponsors may choose to support is Clear Path International, based on Bainbridge Island. Brolley has volunteered his services on numerous occasions to CPI, which has programs in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia and along the Thai-Burma border.

"All the donations I gather will be going to landmine relief and assistance," Brolley said. "People can make a flat donation, or sponsor by mile/kilometer/feet of elevation covered - they just need to know this is a LONG race and those numbers will be big!"

Brolley, who has practiced for 20 years treating sports, spine and over-use injuries, has a bachelors degree from Stanford University in Asian Studies and a physical therapy degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine.

To donate, contact Wolf at stretchpt@live.com. For more information about the Transalpine Run, go to www.transalpine-run.com. Visit www.cpi.org to learn about Clear Path International.

UN says that in Vietnam Life-threatening landmine scavenging on the increase

Via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

"Nguyen Luong Quy was planting a tree on a coffee plantation on the outskirts of Buon Ma Thout, the largest city in Vietnam's Central Highlands in 2000, when his shovel hit a hard metal object.

"There was a big explosion and I must have been knocked unconscious," the 37-year-old farmer told IRIN. "I woke up in hospital and at first I thought I was dead because everything was white."

Although his left arm was blown off, Quy survived the blast, caused by a bomblet - one of millions of cluster bombs dropped by American forces between 1964 and 1973.

But despite his first-hand experience of the dangers of unexploded ordnance (UXO), like many poor Vietnamese, Quy continues to scavenge for the metal contained in cluster bomblets and other unexploded munitions....

...."Scrap metal provides a decent and immediate income without needing any qualifications or investment," notes Tran Hong Chi from Clear Path International (CPI), an UXO victim assistance charity in Dong Ha, the provincial capital of Quang Tri.

"It's not just farmers or the jobless who need the money. In July, a teacher was killed while digging up a bomb during his summer vacation. He had a good job and should have known about the risks."

At the same time, the global economic slowdown is straining the budgets of the NGOs involved in mine clearance."

Read the rest of this article at:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=87822