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Site Admin <webmaster2@icbl.org> .
Tuesday 17 April 2007
The Lahu Democratic Front (LDF), the Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF) and the Pa-O People's Liberation Organization (PPLO), all members of the armed, anti-junta alliance, the National Democratic Front of Burma (NDF), declared that they will no longer use antipersonnel landmines in their armed struggle in Burma, Swiss-based NGO Geneva Call announced in a press release on 16 April 2006.
In the press release announcing the groups’ agreement to the Deed of Commitment – a document committing non-state armed groups to ban landmines, promoted by Geneva Call – Mai Aik Phone, General Secretary of the PSLF was quoted as saying “I know all too well the effect of landmines on the civilian population. My own grandmother lost her life after stepping on a mine laid in a tea plantation. Although opposition groups are using mines to target the military and for defence, all too often the victims are civilians and animals”.
Combined with the signing of the Deed of Commitment by the Chin National Front (also an NDF member) in August 2006, now four out of eight NDF member organizations have committed to the landmine ban.
All three recent signatories reside in Shan State of Burma/Myanmar, where at least eleven other armed non-state groups are active. These include other factions of the Pa-O and Palaung which have ceased hostilities with the military regime, but maintain arms. It is not known if the signature by these groups will include the other factions of their ethnic group.
In its 2002 Annual Report, the Landmine Monitor reported that the Lahu National Organization General Secretary U Aye Maung declared a no-mine-use policy and issued a command to its soldiers to neither use nor acquire antipersonnel mines. Military junta linked Lahu militias within ShanState have also been alleged to be involved in mine use. The PPLO was reported to be a mine user in the 2002-2004 Landmine Monitor reports.
Geneva Call’s Deed of Commitment requires signatory organizations not only to refrain from mine use, but to cooperate in a program to destroy any mine stocks they may hold. They will further be expected to cooperate in the clearance of mines which they or others may have laid previously in their areas of operation. Both the LDF and PSLF have declared themselves ready to destroy the stockpiles that they possess, and the LDF has pledged to remove the mines that they had laid previously, according to the Geneva Call press release.
The National Democratic Front was first engaged by the Australian Campaign to Ban Landmines in 1997, and has shown an openness to dialogue on this issue for several years. The ICBL’s Halt Mine Use in Burma Campaign has consistently encouraged National Democratic Front members, the military junta, and other non-state armed groups within Burma/Myanmar, to agree to a halt in mine use, as part of a general nationwide ceasefire over the past seven years. (Click here for more information)
In 2003, the ICBL was invited to make a presentation to the National Democratic Front membership on the landmine ban, and its work. Then NDF General Secretary Zing Cung stated on that occasion that it was unavoidable that some of their members must use landmines in self defence, a statement the NDF repeated to Geneva Call in January 2007. The ICBL is pleased to see that some members of the NDF have rethought this, and strongly encourages all NDF members to halt mine use.
