Antiland mine campaign on wheels

Antiland mine campaign on wheels

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Dec. 19, 1982. It was a sunny day in the jungle somewhere in the
border of Cambodia and Thailand. Tun Channareth, along with a
group of soldiers, was halfway to the destination when they came
across a mined area.

Twenty-two-year-old Channareth (or Reth for short), was a
soldier for the Cambodian government.

The company of soldiers stepped carefully on every inch of the
mined area, watchful for the possible presence of their enemies.
The eerie silence was shattered by a deafening explosion.

Several soldiers fell and Reth found himself badly injured. He
had stepped on a mine. The land mine shrapnel also hit several
other soldiers, but fortunately for them, they suffered only
minor injuries.

Stripped of all his weapons, Reth was left alone in the middle
of the forest, because the remaining soldiers retreated to help
those less seriously injured.

Later, he was found by two members of a reconnaissance party
who had been sent ahead. But Reth had already lost one leg.

Reth begged them to let him have an axe so he could cut off
the dead weight of his other leg.

However, his saviors did not allow him to do so. Instead, they
tried to convinced him that only a doctor could kill his pain,
stop the blood from streaming out of his wounds and save his
remaining leg.

Reth was quickly put in a hammock and taken to Khao I Dang
Refugee Camp while drifting in and out of consciousness and
losing dangerous amounts of blood.

"There, I remember the doctor, with tears in his eyes, telling
me he would have to amputate my other leg," Reth recalled.

Reth stayed at the hospital for four months. After being
released, he spent two months in rehabilitation, learning to walk
again with the use of bamboo artificial legs. The intense pain
caused by the shrapnel forced high into his legs by the explosion
quickly made him realize that he would spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair.

"I felt hopeless," said Reth.

Reth then managed to convince himself that he had to regain
his strength. Moreover, his wife, Sam Rach Sovinn, was pregnant
at that time, and he had to take responsibility for her and the
baby.

Reth began to learn skills, including technical skills needed
for wheelchair production. As a member of a Jesuit wheelchair
team in Cambodia, he is the designer of wheelchairs adapted
according to the individual needs of the disabled person, whether
they are an amputee, polio victim or person with a congenital
defect.

In his spare time, Reth also helped to teach other disabled
people to overcome their immobility and motivate them to strive
for a better future.

Reth then made a name for himself as an anti-land mine
campaigner. He is one of the four initial authors in Cambodia who
launched a signature campaign in favor of a ban on land mines.

"I have suffered from a land mine, and I will fight (against
them) in order that no more people suffer as I have done," he
said.

His high profile activity brought him to international
exposure. In 1995, he met Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk, the
Pope, the Queen of Spain, the president of Ireland and addressed
the British Parliament -- begging all of them to band land mines
forever.

He also spoke at the UN Review Conference on Land Mines
Protocol in Vienna and presented the conference chairman with 1.7
million signatures supporting a global land mine ban.

After attending the Ottawa Mine Ban Signature Ceremony in
Ottawa in 1997, he traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace
Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines
(ICBL), a nonprofit organization that staunchly urges the world
to ban land mines.

In 1998, he was appointed an ICBL ambassador and has traveled
extensively, including to the USA, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Spain,
Korea and, recently, Indonesia.

Reth, who hails from Battambang province in Cambodia, was born
in 1960. As a boy, he lived for 12 years in Phnom Penh, until the
Khmer Rouge took over the city. He, along with the rest of the
population was forced out and Reth's family resettled in Trapeang
Veng in Siem Reap Province. In 1977, his father had been taken by
the Khmer Rouge for "reeducation" like many others, and never
returned. Reth later joined a resistance army that sided with the
legal government of Cambodia.

In 1981, he married Sam and had six children.

"I was fortunate that I had married her before I lost my legs.
No girl in Cambodia would have wished to marry someone who had
already lost his legs," Reth jokingly told The Jakarta Post
during his recent visit to Indonesia.

During the visit, Reth and ICBL Ambassador for Mine Action
Ross Hynes, from Canada, addressed a seminar on land mines at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here.

Reth admitted that, having been given the title ambassador and
the Nobel Prize, he felt he had reached the top. However, he
reiterated that his struggle was never-ending.

The presence of land mines, referred to by many as "random
death traps", still haunts civilians.

The U.S. State Department, in its 2001 report Hidden Killers,
said there was a growing international consensus that
approximately 60 countries are plagued by 45 million to 50
million land mines planted in their territories.

Furthermore, nine countries still actively use them. "There is
still much to be done. I shall only stop fighting against land
mines when the world is free of them," Reth said.