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Created by and for survivors, LSN empowers individuals and communities affected by landmines to recover from trauma, reclaim their lives and fulfill their rights.
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World Landmine News
Border Peasants Flee As Fields Are Sown With Mines
JAMMU, India, 8 jan 02 (London Times)--
By Richard Beeston
AFTER two weeks in the crossfire between Indian and Pakistani forces, Atama Singh closed the door on his simple home yesterday, took a last look at his crops and picked his way carefully through a freshly laid minefield to start a new life as a refugee.
The fourth Indo-Pakistan war may not have broken out officially yet, but the conflict has already claimed its first victims: the tens of thousands of peasants who have fled their homes on both sides of the border, driven out by hostile fire or by the orders of their own troops.
\"I know I will never harvest that crop,\" said Mr Singh, 48, as he joined his family in a crowded refugee camp, set up on the outskirts of this border city. \"I will be lucky if my six bullocks survive. I had to lock them in the house to keep them from straying into the minefields.\"
Like other villagers in the Pargwal district, where the border runs along the fertile Chenab river, he was given eight hours’ notice by the Indian military last month to evacuate his home. He moved his wife and family out to the relative safety of the refugee camp, then sneaked back home to hold out for as long as he could.
\"In the end the shelling just became too much,\" he said. \"The soldiers were digging bunkers next to the village. We were on the front line.\"
Other refugees, already accustomed to the squalor of the camp, where 40
people eat, sleep and live in a converted children’s classroom, insisted that good could still come out of the latest stand-off.
\"We cannot go on living like this on a border where we can be killed any moment,\" Sohan Lal, a neighbouring villager, said. \"This time India has to attack and teach Pakistan such a lesson that it will never bother us again. They will not dare attack us when we have finished with them.\"
The sentiment brought nods of support from other men clustered around an open fire, where the evening communal meal of rice and beans was being prepared and served on giant leaves to the refugees.
However, the once-solid support from these largely Hindu peasants for the Government’s tough stand against Pakistan showed the first signs of cracking yesterday, with no clear end in sight to the latest stand-off and little being done to re-house them.
What many seemed to fear as much as the Pakistani shells was the Indian Army’s decision to begin laying millions of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, three miles deep, right along the common border, which stretches 1,800 miles from the Indian Ocean to the Himalayas.
One infant has already been killed and his mother seriously injured when they stepped on a mine.
With the experience of other war zones in mind, particularly Afghanistan, there is a growing realisation that planting the devices is simple and quick, but that removing them is slow and costly.
Prakashi, 68, who has survived three previous wars with Pakistan, including one when her village was overrun, said that this time she doubted that she would ever be going home.
\"Those mines are there for good, everyone knows that,\" she said. \"It will never be safe to live in that area again. I do not mind making that sacrifice but I do expect the Government to provide me with somewhere else to live.\"
Her words brought angry comments from many of the other women refugees, who insisted that so far the authorities were supplying them with only meager food rations.
Some even alleged that because of the lack of blankets and tents, three
refugees had died of exposure since fleeing their homes. Talk of being
relocated to new land seemed to be wishful thinking among people who had just lost everything they owned.
A spokesman for the Indian military in Jammu conceded last night that the mines being laid to defend the Indian border would most certainly be there for some time to come.
\"Those farmers are not going to be bringing in their winter crops,\" he said. However, he defended the Government’s record and said that a more permanent solution would be found for the refugees, who number more than 40,000 in this district alone.
In the event of real war breaking out, the number of displaced people can be expected to reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
Posted: Wednesday, January 30, 2002
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