Mine-clearing work in Tamil-controlled areas is a tough job
By Frances Bulathsinghala
KILLINOCHCHI: With a five feet rake in hand 32-year-old Lalithchandran ignores the scorching sun and concentrates on the job that he has been doing for the past three years – looking for mines in the mine infested war torn soil of the LTTE-controlled Killinochchi region.
Lalithchandran, a former carpenter, is one of the 800 de-mining workers employed by the largest mine clearing organization operating in the north east, the Norwegian People’s Aid mine-clearing project that has so far cleared over 30,000 mines in a time span of over three years. Daily the de-miners, clad in their protective vests and face shielding masks, look for the hundreds of thousands of mines that have been laid by both the LTTE and the military on highways, plantations, shrub territory, wells and villages.
“Many of the Tamils returning to their homes after the 2002 ceasefire were desperate to leave their refugee camps and come to the homes they knew. In doing so many did not stop to think of the threat of landmines. But now there is awareness of the dangers of landmines and they would contact us to check the safety of the location, whether it be resettling or cultivating,” says Lalithchandran.
The fact that some of the mine clearers are former LTTE cadres makes it easier to detect mines that the LTTE had laid but as head of the mine-clearing team Charles Frisby, a former British Army infantry officer, points out, the overall task of unearthing mines is no easy job. Although the military has provided with maps of where the mines are, he says finding the exact location is difficult and requires a great deal of patience.
“For us it is easier to locate the mine fields laid by the LTTE. However it is a different case when tackling areas mined by the military. When they left they left the place strewn with mines. Now we have only sketchy maps to find them”, explains Lalithchandran, referring to the Sri Lankan military who had on several occasions managed to capture chunks of territory in the Killinochchi region which is now entirely controlled by the Tamil Tiger rebels. Despite the fact that de-mining is known as a high risk job the number of serious accidents have been few, he says.
“There have been very few accidents when unearthing the mines and we have trained the local staff in handling emergencies. We have now intensified our work so that land could be cleared for resettlement. But the end result of our work depends on the achievement of a lasting peace. Our work will be futile if the country reverts to war,” says Charles Frisby, as the government and the LTTE today began talks in Switzerland in an attempt to save the country from sliding back to war. For many of the local staffers, the job clearing mines is the source of a much needed income in a region where jobs are scarce.
“We could earn up to around 13,000 Sri Lankan rupees per month. It helps to keep the food on the table,” says Kamaldaas, a de-miner from the area of Malawi in the LTTE-controlled Mullativu district. As Pelle Christrup, a Swedish technical expert in mine clearing points out, the December 2004 tsunami increased the need of mine removal following the displacement of hundreds of tsunami victims in the region.
“Our initial focus when we took over work following the February 22, 2002 ceasefire was to enable the war displaced to return to their homes. Now the need is more acute following further displacement owing to the tsunami,”, says Christrup who has been involved in mine removal in Sri Lanka for the past three years.
According to Christrup all the mine clearing is carried out manually without the usage of automatic mine detectors. “With these mine detectors, the problem is that it cannot differentiate between a live mine and a dead one. All it does is detect the presence of the mine and therefore the workers are at a high risk,” he says.
He explains that mines can be active for over one hundred years. According to him the kinds of mines found in the rebel-controlled territories vary from those fashioned by the Tigers to those made in other countries. A good number of the mines are claymores, he says.
Having worked previously in Afghanistan and Kosovo, Christrup who is no longer affected by the scorching heat and spends much of his day supervising the de-miners, claims that the Tamils in the war embittered north east are ‘the best de-miners on the planet’. “We find that those who live in difficult and extremely humid conditions in the villages of the LTTE-controlled areas make much better de-miners than those who live in other areas of the north east which may have more facilities and where life less exacting,” he says adding that over 40 de-miners are women
“Only a few women can withstand the long hours in the extreme heat. Even in the case of the men only the toughest survive and the best de-miners are the former LTTE cadres,” he says pointing to a team of de-miners working under the mid afternoon sun in an area of land set aside for a tsunami resettlement housing scheme. But the de-miners say they have withstood much harder trials during the bloody 20-year-old war in which over 65,000 lives had been lost. Twenty-four-year-old S. Kokuladas does not remember a time in his life when he was not tethered to war and its burdens.
A resident of the LTTE-administered Killinochchi he and his family had been displaced over five times as various parts of the region exchanged hands between the government military and the LTTE. Today, he is virtually a prisoner in the LTTE-controlled regions, fearing to step out into the government controlled territory lest he is arrested as an LTTE cadre.
“The moment they (the military) see the resident address on our identity cards, which clearly says ‘Killinochchi’, they assume that we are LTTE suspects. I have never been to Colombo and have only travelled out to the north eastern government-controlled region of Vavuniya twice in my life,” says Kokuladas who has been trained by the Foreign Mine clearing staff to work as a medical assistant. “I can give first aid and have treated many de-miners who suffered minor injuries when clearing shrub before looking for mines in jungle terrain”, he says.
“All we now want is the ushering in of an era where we will no longer have to dig out mines nor fear new ones being planted,” he continues.
While the negotiating process gets underway in Geneva between the government and the Tamil Tigers, for Kokuladas, like the rest of the Tamil population in the north east, peace is still an alien word hovering in the distant horizon.
