India
Lays New Mines While US Can't Do Anything! Write a Letter to the Editor.
As you'll see in the news article below, India has begun planting antipersonnel
and anti-tank landmines in the farmland between India and Pakistan. Write
a letter to the editor to your local paper to raise awareness and pressure
about this issue, especially while President Bush determines new landmines
policies. Below is a sample letter, but feel free to use information about
local anti-landmines efforts and/or reference recent articles about this
issue in your local paper. If your article is published, please send us
a copy at USCBL/ care of Physicians for Human Rights/ 100 Boylston Street/
Suite 702/ Boston, MA 02116
To the Editor:
I am distressed to learn that India has begun laying landmines on its
border with Pakistan. These weapons will lie in wait for soldiers, farmers,
and children alike for generations to come. As it tries to diffuse escalating
tensions between India and Pakistan, the United States government, a Mine
Ban Treaty hold-out, is unable to criticize India‚s mine-laying actions,
however dangerous they may be to long-term civilian safety and however
antithetical they may be to human rights.
President Bush is in the process of determining his Administration‚s
landmines policies. Meanwhile, American soldiers have already begun to
step on and lose limbs to antipersonnel landmines in Afghanistan. It is
unclear whether these mines were laid by Taliban, Northern Alliance, or
other forces in the country. Unfortunately, our government cannot even
ask the Northern Alliance to refrain from planting mines that may endanger
U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians. These new situations in India and
Afghanistan give us more reasons to ban landmines like most of the world‚s
nations have doneöso we can urge mine users to stop and so we can protect
our own present and future soldiers.
Sincerely,
Name
Address
Phone
INDIA'S LAND MINES, A BITTER HARVEST FOR FARMERS (Excerpted)
The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Jan. 4, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/04/international/asia/04BORD.html
ULLA KOT, India, Jan. 3--Raj Singh was tending to his cattle one day last week when soldiers rolled into this tiny village hard against the border with Pakistan and went to work on the fields where he and his neighbors had only recently sown this year's wheat.
The soldiers planted something else altogether: land mines.
They asked the farmers to vacate their fields. They necklaced the mine fields with a narrow wire fence and hung red triangles as warnings. By the time they had finished, more than 80 percent of the agricultural lands in this village were beyond reach.
"We can't do anything," said Mr. Singh, 38, a retired soldier with a handlebar mustache and 10 acres of land to share with his five brothers and their wives and children. "We don't know if they're going to be there six months, one year, until the war, or what."
Even as diplomatic efforts continue in an attempt to avert the fourth war between India and Pakistan, soldiers on the Indian side of the border have been busy in the last two weeks sowing thousands of acres of farm land with antipersonnel and antitank mines, in what looks like preparation for a long standoff between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Officials of the Indian Army, which is laying the mines with help in some places from the Border Security Force, have declined to disclose details about the scope of the effort. But a drive through several border regions here, along with accounts from other border areas, indicate that India is in the process of laying mines along virtually the entire length of its 1,800-mile border with Pakistan.
One army commander here said the mined area extended roughly one and a quarter mile deep. . .
But the land mines may be the most worrisome and potentially longest- lasting measure. The local army commander, Col. Shirish Kulkarni, said his unit had spent nearly two weeks laying mines across a mile and quarter-deep strip of farm land. A two-to-three-acre plot, he said, was likely to contain 50 or 60 mines. Once the mines are placed, clearing one field alone could easily take 20 days. "It's a colossal and herculean task," he said.
His sympathies, he added, were with the farmers, whose livelihoods had been affected by his presence. "I also feel sorry for them," he said. "Their lives are disturbed." . . .
The cattle fodder that is now ready to be picked cannot be had. Already it looks as if the wheat will probably wither before it can be harvested in April. Most of the women and children of the village have been sent away to neighboring villages. The men are far more idle than they would like, left to stand and stare at fields that are likely to spend the winter without water or fertilizer.
Instead, bullock carts share narrow dirt roads with army trucks. Farmers work where they can, tending to a plot just beyond what is now a lethal, forbidden zone that was once part of India's breadbasket.
The area has already proved perilous. Last week, 18 soldiers were killed in a border village in Rajasthan, when a mine accidentally exploded. Several have been wounded.
There have been civilian casualties as well. On New Year's Day, a bicyclist trying to cross into the fenced, mine field in the Bikaner district of western Rajasthan was blown to bits. A child was wounded in the same area last week.
In another Rajasthani border area, called Ganganagar, a local official said a 14-year-old boy had died and three other civilians had been wounded while helping soldiers with land mines last week. Stray cattle and dogs have been killed in several places along the border.
In this section of Punjab, soldiers were busy adding to the fortifications today. As the sun peeked through the sky at midday, a dozen men washed and snipped narrow white strips of cloth to measure and mark where the mines would be laid. Empty green mine cases stood stacked against the wall of a schoolhouse that the army had taken over. . .
War or no war, the people of Mulla Kot say, their lives are already embattled. "As far as we are concerned, this is a war," said Jarnail Singh, 30, the father of two, whose wife and children have been sent to a village further inland. "For the last 10 days, we have not had a normal life. We can't be with our families. We can't work on our fields."
Tara Singh, the old man, waved his arms across his land. "Until the mines are removed," he said, "this is no more agricultural land. It is finished."
Copyright 2002 New York
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