Family-wide blast radii for landmine victims in Arakan State

By Admin 03 Jul 2024

Written By Nyi Htwee Chay

The sound of the blast was unmistakable.
 
“I ran out of the house after I heard the explosion. I saw my husband crawling on his side as he held his bleeding, ripped left leg high,” Daw Khaing Khaing Shwe recalled of her 43-year-old husband U Tun Naing’s encounter with a landmine.
 
U Tun Naing had gone to Dat Taw Taung Hill, nearly one mile south of his native Ohn Baung Village in Kyaukphyu Township, on May 7 to collect bamboo to repair his house. He lost his left leg after stepping on the landmine. 

Myanmar military troops are deployed at a pagoda compound on top of the hill.
 
U Tun Naing used to be the breadwinner of the five-member family, who survived on his daily income. The burden to provide fell on the shoulders of his wife after he lost his leg.
 
“We were already struggling to make ends meet, and we have debts. I don’t know what to do. I am lost,” said Daw Khaing Khaing Swe.
 
Daw Oo Nwe faced the same predicament as Daw Khaing Khaing Swe, struggling to support her four children after her husband lost both legs in a mine blast. The residents of Pein Ne Chaung Village, located along the Kaladan River in Kyauktaw Township, survived on a daily income before the mine blast turned their lives upside down.
 
Her husband U Tun Aye Than, 37, did seasonal jobs to earn a living until he lost both legs in a landmine blast when he returned home after fishing on February 14.
 
“We were already very impoverished, and I don’t know how to feed my children,” said Daw Oo Nwe, adding that her family is going hungry.
 
Residents in Arakan State have been suffering from landmines planted by armed groups since fighting broke out in late 2018. There have been many cases in which residents were injured or killed when they stepped on landmines near their villages, croplands, in forests and on hills.
 
Since renewed fighting broke out in November of last year, at least 50 people, mostly breadwinners, have been killed or injured in landmine blasts.
 
According to a DMG tally, five men and a woman were killed and 10 men and a woman were injured by landmines from April 9 to June 17 in Arakan State.
 
When breadwinners have been killed or lost limbs, family members have faced huge challenges in terms of livelihood and other aspects of daily life.
 
With commodity shortages and skyrocketing prices due to junta blockades of land and water routes to Arakan State since the latest fighting between the military and AA began, the loss of a family’s breadwinner is often catastrophic.
  
“It is no longer possible for my children to continue their education. It is not easy for us to feed them regularly,” said Daw Oo Nwe.
 
Daw Khaing Khaing Swe, who is a diabetic, had to sell the land, house and farm that she had inherited to pay for her and her husband’s medical treatments. Despite those measures to shore up the family’s finances, she said there is no money left.
 
“It is really unfortunate for us,” she lamented, tears streaming down her cheeks.
 
International organisations and local civil society groups provided financial and other necessary assistance to the families of local people who were injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERWs) during the previous conflict in Arakan State.
 
Given the dynamics of the current conflict and political situation, however, there is a lack of aid support, and the people affected by landmines are faced with numerous hurdles in their day-to-day existence.
 
Surviving landmine victims often face challenges returning to working life — if they can at all. The victims and their families are affected psychologically and financially, and social support networks are strained, noted an official from a civil society organisation in Arakan State. 
 
“My Grade 8 daughter cried a lot when I told my children that I could no longer send them to school. We can no longer send our children to school. We currently rely on people in the village for our livelihoods,” said a tearful Daw Khaing Khaing Swe, who had ambitions for her children that are, for now at least, deferred.