Landmine Museum

Meet Boreak, 14 year old, very talkative, smart and funny, excellent foodball player. 4th of 10 children in family grown up near Thai border. When he was 6, a landmine accident took his right fingers, then 3 more surgery, trying to correct the last incompetent one, eventually took his whole right arm.

17 year-old Poy almost lost his both eyes when a landmine in his right hand exploded in front of his face. After family cleaned the wounds to save his left eye, he was carried over in make shift hammock for 2 hours to nearby hospital. Without right arm and right eye, his dream is to become a boxer.

Woleak works at the entrance of Landmine museum, all dressed in Khmer Rouge uniform. It was less than 30 years ago when children are forced to shoot guns and build landmines. Today there are 3 to 5 million landmines in the country, each year some 90 people get injured or killed by accident related to them.

Mr. Akira, after his parents were killed by Khmer Rouge he was forced to join the army, being specialized to build landmines at the age of 10. he kept being forced to work for three different armys (Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Army) building and burying landmines. Now he goes into the village in mountains, searches for them and diffuses them. With donation he receives he was able to educate Cambodian soldiers today about landmine extraction, to build landmine museim to appeal awareness to international society, and to educate the children who were victimized by landmine and seek for their future oppotunity.
An interesting fact that i learned from my visit to the museum: There are 42 coutries that did NOT sign 1997 Mine Ban Treaty as of Dec. 22, 2004, they are, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Finland, Georgia, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kazakhstan, No. Korea, S. Korea, Kuwait, Kyngystan, Lao PDR, Latvia, Lebanon, Libya, Micronesia, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tonga, Tuvalu, UAE, United States of America, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.
Countries that PRODUCED landmines since 2002: USA (stockpile 10.4 million landmines) Cuba, Egypt, Iraq, Singapore, N+S Korea (2 million) Nepal, Russia (50 mil) China (110 mil) Iran, Vietnam, Pakistan, India (6 mil) Burma
please visit www.cambodialandminemuseum.org for more information, and to support (it costs $2 to clear 3 mines)