Hundreds of people attended a march at Angkor Wat in Cambodia on Sunday against the use of landmines after the United States decided to send these explosive devices to help Ukraine repel Russian advances.
Participants, including victims, repeatedly chanted their wish for “a world without mines” during a four-kilometer march around the Siem Reap temple.
The march took place the day before the opening of a conference against mines in Cambodia, a country devastated by the presence of unexploded ordnance, a legacy of three decades of war.
Hundreds of delegates are expected in Siem Reap to assess progress made under the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which neither Russia nor the United States has signed.
The march and conference come after Washington's announcement this week of sending antipersonnel mines to Ukraine to stop Russian advances, while Joe Biden had declared in 2022 that he would ban their use, except in the Korean peninsula.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said these antipersonnel mines were “very important” to counter the Russian army in eastern Ukraine.
In Cambodia, where the remains of the civil war continue to kill and mutilate, landmine victims told AFP they feared the consequences of this decision.
“There will be more victims like me (…) I am sad and shocked,” said Horl Pros, a former soldier who lost his right leg due to the explosion of an antipersonnel mine in 1984.
After nearly three decades of civil war starting in the 1960s, Cambodia became one of the most heavily bombed and mined countries in the world.
Since 1979, around 20,000 people have been killed by landmines and unexploded ordnance, and twice as many have been injured.
“I think it is 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 and a leg during mine clearance in 1995 in Mozambique.
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