February 14, 2002	Thursday	Zilhaj 1, 1422

JAMMU: Just five years after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the use of landmines continues to be a divisive issue. But India, which has signed a treaty to restrict but not ban the use of landmines, argues that the present situation gives it no choice but to use them.

A coalition of Kashmiri separatist parties, calling themselves the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, has argued for years that Kashmiris should be allowed the right of self-determination.

Late last month, the Hurriyat called for setting up their own election commission to hold a poll to determine who are the “real representatives” of the state.

India has recently appointed a new mediator to talk with the Hurriyat, but it continues to point to the ties that some of these separatist parties maintain with groups that infiltrate the Indian-Pakistani border.

There are hundreds of thousands of landmines here from previous conflicts. Some of these mines, planted on slopes, have drifted far from their original minefields, killing nearly 100 Indian civilians and maiming others.

“This is to impose caution on the militants,” says General Krishna. Yet opponents of landmines say that they inevitably kill and maim ordinary citizens. “It pains me very much to see new landmines being laid,” says Balakrishna Kurvey, the Indian coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, from Nagpur. “This is an inhuman weapon that kills or maims innocent people long after war.”

In the border village of Chanduchack, a farmer named Babu Singh has already sent his family to stay with relatives in another village. “I do not know where these landmines have been planted in my own field,” he says in a note of exasperation. “Due to these planted mines, we cannot go to our fields, and even our children cannot play.” —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.