Poor Must Make Living in Minefield...

Kbal Tanup village - Emerging from the forest in this village in Banteay-Meanchey province, a family follows the track that leads into an area being cleared by CMAC. A young boy with a large bag of rice on his head steps delicately over deminers’ marking sticks and the rest of the family follows.

Four CMAC deminers stand aside and watch. The marking sticks indicate the farthest end of the lane they are clearing down the center of the forest track. A few minutes earlier, a mine detector had registered a live reading where the family had walked.

Every day the people in this village in O Som Por commune make a difficult decision. They put their lives at risk, by leaving their homes, since their district is one of the 10 most heavily mined districts in all Cambodia. But they also need to get water and food, and to gather firewood for sale. "When we mark [the areas suspected to be mined], we stop and explain to them. But we cannot stop them 100%, especially the poorest ones." said CMAC’s Hun Sokuntheary.

There are four villages in the commune, which stretches along a narrow road which runs through a forest to Phnom Malai town, 5 km to the west. The area has been a battlefield for decades. After the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 it was occupied by the State of Cambodia forces. Most recently, Khmer Rouge and rebel troops repeatedly skirmished with the RCAF. And all the warring parties used land mines.

Perilous Path: villagers cross into a safe area. The border with Thailand is marked by a stream, 700 meters to the north of the Malai road and it is heavily mined. But the stream is the community’s source of water, so CMAC has made it a priority to clear the access path. For the people of Kbal Tanup, each day is full of peril. Both their homesites in the village and their rice fields back from the road are mined—as is the area between the houses and fields. Many of these families have demined their small plots themselves, said Sorn Sum, 45, the local commune chief. Many of the men are former KR soldiers who have experience with mines; some hire themselves out to demine for landholders. But it is a tricky business and people are often hurt, even after an area is supposedly cleared. A young man Sorn Sum paid to clear around his house was later killed as he tried to demine a plot for another villager living nearby. To supplement their rice crop, farmers go to the nearby forest to collect bamboo and gather wood to make charcoal for sale. A woodcutter died a month ago as he searched for bamboo, killed by a mine buried just 10 meter from where the CMAC now works.

"He knew the mines were there. He had to do it. He had nothing to eat. So he gets the bamboo to sell it," said Sorn Sum. Last year nine people in the area were injured by mines, he said.Sorn Sum is responsible for the whole area. As commune chief, his life is complicated by a recent influx of people coming to find land. "I give a small piece of land along the road but the area is mined," he said. " Some people try to clear some of it, a little bit." There are no rice fields available for newcomers. A bulldozer operated by the district chief was once used to clear land, but is now broken and disused. Sorn Sum struggles to feed his family alongside the other villagers. He said his $5 per month salary is almost never paid and his rice field does not produce enough to feed him, his wife and their four children.

Village chief Sorn Sum

"I am afraid of the mines but I always follow the person who knows how to cut the wood and how to clear the mines," he said grimly.

Sorn Sum said he doesn’t expect his commune’s situation to change any time soon. "I think that CMAC will clear the land step by step, but we must provide for our families, and step by step the families will also clear the land by themselves," he said.