Landmine


In 1997, I read a picture book as "Not Mines, But Flowers". I was very impressed by this book, which is written in both Japanese and English.

Have you ever heard the word "landmine"?

Currently, there are 110 million landmines in 64 countries, almost all them are anti-personal ones, they are buried or scattered from airplanes. As a result, there are 25,000 victims annually. A rate of 70 persons are killed or maimed per day. But, due to the lack of funds and Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) specialists, only 100,000 mines are removed annually.

It is estimated to take 1,000 years to remove the landmines, which are already buried. After a war, landmines still exist and menace people's lives, hope and future. Because of landmines, people cannot plant and cannot get crops. It leads to starvation and death of many children.

Landmines are very cheap and easy to make. The cheapest landmines are only 3 dollars to get, but cost to remove them are 100 to 1,000 dollars per them. Some of them are clearly targeted for children. The worst thing is these landmines are shaped like sweets or toys. This is an extremely cruel way to kill children.

Today, the biggest problem with landmines are that they are difficult to remove. The manufacturing process of landmines has developed but the way of removing them is still primitive, using metal detectors to locate and explode them. Even EOD specialists are killed by explosion due to mistakes while at work.

Landmines are called "the weapon of the devil", but the devil doesn't make the weapon. Humankind makes them. We should completely deny the production, transportation, sales, stockpile or deployment of landmines. We have to remove all landmines for mankind and for all creatures on the Earth, even if it takes 1,000 years.




Safe-Lane (English/French)