"I want to make my country safe for my people," says Cambodian Aki Ra. It’s a nice sentiment but when the story behind those words is known, it takes on a whole new meaning.
Cambodia is littered with landmines. It is estimated that between six million and 11 million mines are still active and in the ground. Furthermore, countless unexploded ordnance (UXO) including bombs, mortars, grenades and bullets remains. Much of it was originally connected to trip wires and rigged as booby traps.
It is estimated that 800 people are killed or wounded as a result of this ordnance in Cambodia every year. Put another way, two or three people will step on a landmine or walk through a trip wire, every single day.
A living example of the continual plight affecting Cambodia is Sopphart, a man I met on my recent trip to Cambodia. Sopphart comes from Poipet, in Cambodia’s north. One day, while collecting firewood with his older brothers, Sopphart stepped on a mine that blew off his foot.
Hearing the explosion, his brothers, who were a short distance away, ran towards him to help. As they did, one of them ran through a tripwire connected to a fragmentation grenade. That grenade killed his brothers instantly and a fragment from the grenade blinded Sopphart in one eye. Within seconds, Sopphart had lost his foot, his eye and his two brothers.
Like all Cambodians alive at the time, Aki Ra became part of Pol Pot’s extreme communist experiment that tried to turn Cambodia into a worker’s paradise. When the Khmer Rouge seized power on 17 April 1975, the cities and towns were evacuated and all residents, including Aki Ra and his family, were moved into labour camps.
By the time he was five years old, the Khmer Rouge had killed both of Aki Ra’s parents. Orphaned, he was conscripted into the Khmer Rouge. By age ten, he was a soldier. The Khmer Rouge greatly exploited the innocence of children who, in their eyes, were unspoiled by old ways and western ideas. “They had my innocence in their hands and were able to warp it any way they chose,” Aki Ra said. “I came to accept their ways more and more.”
The Vietnamese entered Cambodia in 1979 and rapidly overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Strong resistance was encountered in some areas, however, and it wasn’t until 1983 that Aki Ra was