SIEM REAP: Survivors and sniffing dogs joined hundreds of people at Cam­bodia’s Angkor Wat on Sunday for a march against landmines after the US decision to send anti-personnel mines to Ukraine.

Participants, including landmine victims and deminers, repeatedly chanted for “a mine-free world” during the four-kilometre walk around the famed temple complex in Siem Reap.

The march was held a day before an anti-landmine conference convenes in Cambodia, which is awash in unexploded ordnance as a legacy of civil war.

Hundreds of delegates are expected in Siem Reap to assess progress on the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, which neither Russia nor the United States are party to.

The march and conference come after Washington announced this week that it would send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine in a major policy shift that was immediately criticised by human rights campaigners.

In Cambodia, where the relics of civil war continue to claim lives and maim people, landmine victims said they fear the casualties that could come of the decision.

“There will be more victims like me,” said Horl Pros, a former soldier who lost his right leg to a landmine in 1984.

“I am sad and feel shocked.” Washington says it has sought commitments from Kyiv to use the mines in its own territory and only in areas that are not populated in order to decrease the risk to civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the mines “very important” to halting Russian attacks.

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2024