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REPORTS: 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 |
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Comments Received by Landmine MonitorPages: << | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | >> | Sort by: Date / Country Country: Qatar Date Received: 09 Sep 1999
Embassy of the
The Landmine Monitor Core Group September 9, 1999
MS. Mary Wareham Dear Madam, It was my pleasure to receive your letter dated July 21st, 1999 and the enclosed Landmine Monitor Report 1999. I heartily congratulate you on the able manner in which you handled your humanitarian undertaking. I would also like to avail myself of the kind offer you made in the last paragraph of your letter where you welcomed comment, correction or clarification, to draw attention to the following:
I would appreciate very much the posting of this information to your web-site and its inclusion in the next report of Landmine Monitor. Yours sincerely,
Saad Mohamed Al-Kobaisi Country: Monaco Date Received: 27 Jul 1999
Mission Permanente
Reference 99/793 New York, July 27 1999 Dear Madam, I have the honour to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your report along with its executive summary on landmine. As a donour country for the Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Action, my delegation welcomes this comprehensive report and looks forward to another study by the Landmine monitor on this serious and delicate topic. Please accept, Madame, the assurance of my highest consideration. Chargé d'affaires, a.i. Isabelle Picco Mrs. Mary Wareham Senior Advocate, Arms Division Human Rights Watch Country: Slovenia Date Received: 27 Jul 1999
EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA
Mrs. Mary Wareham Washington, July 27, 1999 Dear Mrs. Wareham, Thank you for the publications Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World and its Executive Summary. Landmine Monitor can be of great help to all those concerned with the elimination of the production and use of landmines all over the world. Slovenia is taking an active role in achieving the goal of a world being safe from land mines. To this end Slovenia established an International Trust Fund in order to organize and finance demining activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as to assit in the rehabilitation of the mine victims. Enclosed is an International Trust Fund brochure, which explains our efforts in great detail. We believe that this information will be of help in compiling together the next issue of the Landmine Monitor. We wish you and your associates success in your noble work. Sincerely, Igor Kerstein Charge dAffairs, a.i. Country: Colombia Date Received: 22 Jul 1999 EMBAJADA DE COLOMBIA Washington, DC July 22nd, 1999
Ms. Mary Wareham Dear Ms. Wareham: I really appreciate your sending me a copy of the Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World and its Executive Summary wich, I am sure, will provide an important means to indicate the global effectiveness on landmine banning. Cordially, Luis Alberto Moreno Ambassador Country: Burma / Myanmar Date Received: 16 Jul 1999
Embassy of the Union of Myanmar July 16, 1999
Ms. Mary Warehamn Dear Ms. Warehamn, I thank you for sending me a copy of the Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World and its Executive Summary. The report is impressive both in its scope and coverage. There is no doubt that considerable amount of time and effort was invested in the undertaking. I have not yet had the opportunity to study each and every chapter of the report in depth. However, I have taken time to review the section on Myanmar. While the country report is replete with details and source information it does not stand up to scrutiny. Its principal shortcoming is that it is based largely on interviews with disaffected individuals or politically-motivated groups residing in neighboring Thailand. The assertion of the researchers from the Landmine Monitor that Myanmar soldiers laid mines inside Thailand or that there are repeated examples of mine use by the Tatmadaw directed against the civilian, non-combatant population is groundless. It is a serious charge and should not be made unless it can be substantiated. Disinterested observers should be aware that the Tatmadaw is a highly disciplined organization dedicated to the defense of the nation. It is not a mercenary army. I am deeply disappointed that the researchers have ignored this and have given a sympathetic hearing to the outlandish tales gleaned from the "refugee camps" in Thailand or from the fodder fed into the electronic media by activist groups. Nothing is further from the truth than to say that civilians are being used in Myanmar as human mine sweepers. With regard to the sub section on ethnic armed groups, it is factually incorrect to designate the "Rohingya" as an ethnic group. There are 135 nationalities in Myanmar. The "Rohingya" is certainly not one of them. It should also not be forgotten that today peace reigns in Myanmar like never before. Seventeen armed groups have returned to the fold. The KNU (Kayin National Union) remains the only hold out. It is therefore absolutely incorrect to state that the "Karen, Shan, Chin, Arakan, Karenni and Rohingya" are currently involved in military conflict with the central government. The lack of objectivity and balance in the country report is all the more telling when one notes that the use of mines by the Tatmadaw is portrayed as indiscriminate whereas that of the insurgent groups as less so. In the sub-section on the use of landmines by ethnic armed groups, the researchers state,".The KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army) place them on paths known to be used by government troops. The government and the DKBA retaliate by mining destroyed villages, fields and around villages as well as to protect their camp. I am encouraged to note that Landmine Monitor acknowledges that the report has its shortcomings and that it regards it as a continuing process to be improved upon. I offer my criticism with the hope that it will be seen as constructive and that it would lead to a more accurate and reliable reporting system in the years ahead. Yours Sincerely, Tin Winn See also Reply to Burmese Embassy in D.C. by the writers of the Burma country report. ____________________________________________________________ Reply to Burmese/Myanmar Embassy in D.C.
Ambassador Tin Winn 8 August, 1999 Ambassador Tin Winn, Thank you for your letter of 16 July directed to Mary Wareham at the Landmine Monitor office in Washington DC. I am the researcher who was responsible for the Landmine Monitor chapter on Myanmar. I am working on an update of the chapter for the Year 2000 Landmine Monitor, and welcome your comments and criticisms, and would particularly welcome your cooperation in making our information on Myanmar as complete as possible. I will address your concerns and seek additional comments or concerns you may have on these responses. I share your concern that the report relied too much on sources from outside Myanmar. Your letter is the first response I have received officially on the report. Although I have had contact with, and sent copies of our report on to, Counselor Pau and Lt Col Kyaw Han, respectively at the Union of Myanmar Embassy and Military Attache in Bangkok, I have, so far, received no comments from them. To be fair, Counselor Pau has nothing to do with Landmines and admited little knowledge about the issue. He forwarded a list of questions which I had prepared for the Government of the Union of Myanmar to Yangon. Six months later, I have still received no responses from Yangon. I followed this up by asking Counselor Pau if he could provide me with a list of persons within Ministries to follow-up and make contact with in Yangon. He said he would send the list to me, but now, many months later, I am still waiting on it. Similiarly, I contacted Lt. Col. Kyaw Han, the Military Attache in Bangkok. Like Counselor Pau, he was courteous, but gave me little real information. He claims that in current times, landmine victims are not to be found within your country, and international assistance for victims is therefore unnecessary. He seems to be out-of-touch with current realities in Myanmar, as his information is directly contradicted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is providing international assistance for the care of mine victims through the Ministry of Health. The ICRC joint-program has been providing prosthetics to civilian victims of mine warfare in Myanmar for over 10 years, and continues to do so today. Handicap International, a member of the Landmine Monitor core group, will be traveling to Myanmar this month to Yangon to assess the possibility of opening a programme to help in the rehabilitation of civilian victims of mine warfare. Since I could not make contact with knowledgeable individuals within the Union of Myanmar Government from Bangkok, I traveled directly to Yangon earlier this year. Although I had faxed letters of my planned visit ahead, including my bonafides, and further copies of our questions related to the Landmine Monitor, I could find no one who had received these questions (either from my faxes or through the Embassy or Military Attache). The Ministry officials who did meet with me, did so out of courtesy since my visit was not official. However it appears to have been impossible to have arranged to come officially, since I have been unable to receive responses through official sources. Your help in this situation would be most welcome. In particular, I would seek for you to provide me with a list of individuals in Ministries who have direct knowledge and responsibility for dealing with Landmine Victim Assistance, and who will be in charge of de-mining operations in affected areas in Myanmar. Now on to your specific concerns. As to the allegation we made of Anti-personnel mine laying by Tatmadaw troops outside the territory of the Union of Myanmar, as you stated, these are serious sovereignity violations, and we treat them as such. Here our sources are the Governments of both Thailand and Bangladesh. Cases of extra-territorial mining have been ongoing over the past few years by your soldiers. Officials of both governments have said they regularly raise this concern with the Union of Myanmar through official channels, so someone in Yangon should know the details and be able to brief you. Incursions and mine laying by Tatmadaw units has been reported several times through the news media as well in both countries. Sources for the articles are official, and from the domestic population (not disaffected persons from the Union) living in the border areas. The last incursion by Tatmadaw troops, during which they laid mines, in Thailand was around the 1st of May of this year. 16 mines of Myanmar manufacture were lifted by the Royal Thai Military, although a few were triggered by vehicles prior to that. You wrote that you felt that I portrayed the Tatmadaw as a mercenary army. I am very aware that many of your top officers have graduated from some of the most prestigous military academies in the world, and that the Ministry of Defense is an expansive organization which is professionally run. However, when it comes to troops in the field, things are often different. Training for some of your frontline troops appears to be poor, and under the pressures of warfare, order and rule frequently break down- in any army. I have spoken with ordinary Burmese on the streets of Yangon and Mandalay who have had to do a stint of military service. They report, in relation to mines, that they were basically instructed to lay them and forget them. None of these (admitedly few people) reported to me any instuctions to mark them in any way, nor had they ever seen them marked. Now, my pool of interveiwees was rather small, and I could not draw any conclusions from these individuals alone that I could put in our report. With regard to the Rohingya, I have endeavored to use what appears to me to be international usage. I use the following two sources, both United Nations, both with agreements to work within your country with the Rohingya. Almost all of the refugees were Rohingyas' although accurate statistics are not available, the Rohingyas are thought to constitute just under half of Rakhines State population, which is estimated at 4.5 million source U.N.H.C.R. The State of the Worlds Refugees also In Myanmar, WFP provides assistance to Rohingya returnees following an agreement with the UNHCR, WFP, and the Governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar. Source Myanmar, Country Report by World Food Programme I do not consider this section to be factually incorrect but perhaps you can explain to me how I can refer to this more appropriately. The following section of your letter refers to ceasefires and holdout armed groups. Your assertion that the KNU are the only hold out is surprising. I enclose a chart which I will be including, in an updated form, in our next Landmine Monitor Report. It is a significant improvement on the incomplete one published in the 1999 Monitor. I assess there to be roughly 26 groups under arms, of which just under half have a ceasefire agreement. Again, I would be pleased to get your comments on this list. It is accurate to the best of my ability to research, but confirmation from the Government of the Union of Myanmar is crucial. My assertion of ongoing warfare in the listed states is based on the following: Shan State-a Shan State Army(apparently made up of the remnants of the MTA and others) are currently involved in hit and run warfare with Tatmadaw units in central Shan State; Karenni State- you had a ceasefire with the KNPP, but it broke down due to alledged violations by Tatmadaw troops. Shelling was heard from Mae Hong Son, in Thailand last month in the fighting between this group and the Tatmawdaw; Karen State- the KNU and a few other tiny armed groups. In Chin State the so called Chin National Army is also making hit and run attacks on Tatmadaw positions. In Arakan State, there are about a half dozen armed groups, all of them rather small, but they do engage in some guerrilla activities. While I know few of these problems are reported in the New Light of Myanmar, they do come to the notice of newspapers of the countries who border Myanmar. Here I am not talking about reports by disaffected individuals, I am speaking only of news reports in which the source is either official, or where there are interviews with citizens of the neighboring countries, usually farmers close tot he border who hear the fighting, or cross-border traders who hear or see events. You wrote that you felt our report lacked objectivity. I am very concerned and somewhat surprised by this. We worked hard to assure our report was balanced, and factually correct. Actually we were fed a lot of propaganda by those you labeled disaffected individuals. I will give you a few examples. In one case, a Thai district level authority told us that the Burmese troops which came across the border were issued 200 landmines apiece to lay. I calculated the weight of the landmines and came to the easy conclusion that the soldier probably could not carry that many and that this was a myth. In another case, we did visit a camp on Thai soil in which KNU personnel led us to interveiw several mine victims. They all gave an identical story, they were obviously primed to give us this. We disregarded this testimony. We look at each piece of information we receive and cross check it from as many sources as possible. We are very aware that some sources are biased, and take that into account when assessing the information we received. Having access to knowledgeable persons within the Union of Myanmar would help us enormously. The section on Human minesweepers. Here you have picked on the one part of our report which is the weakest. We did not interview anyone directly who claimed this. However, we were provided with documentation from the International Labor Organizations exhaustive study of forced labor in Myanmar, and have read the interviews they did with people in the field at length. We consider this evidence by a globally respected body to be legitimate. I have made a great effort to bring input of the Union of Myanmar government into the Landmine Monitor process. Your Embassy and Military Attache here, as I wrote, have been cordial, but not very forthcoming with the type of information we need. I hope that your letter will help bring about action, and that through further communication we can gather accurate information on the state of the landmine crisis. To the best of our ability to tell, no one knows how many mines or victims may be out there in Myanmar. Almost certainly the victims are in the thousands, the mines are in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands. This must be of great concern to you, and we wish to help put together a reliable picture of the problem so that eventually demining and quality care for mine victims can take place during the post-conflict development of these regions. Respectfully,
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan
Nonviolence International South East Asia 495/44 Soi Yu-Omsin, Jaransanitwong 40
Tel: (66-2) 883-4946 www.igc.org/nonviolence/niseasia/ Country: Jamaica Date Received: 15 Jul 1999
EMBASSY OF JAMAICA
TELEPHONE: (202) 452-0660 July 15, 1999
Ms. Mary Wareham Dear Ms. Wareham: I write to acknowledge and thank you for your letter along with the Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World and its Executive Summary. I look forward to reading this report, which seems to contain a lot of useful information. I will also share the report with my Government, and will share with you my comments in due course. Please accept my best wishes. Yours sincerely, Dr. Richard L. Bernal Ambassador Country: Sri Lanka Date Received: 15 Jul 1999 July 15, 1999 Dr. M.S. Mary Wareham Seniro Advocate, Arms Division Human Rights Watch 1630 Connecticut Ave., NW, #500 Washington, DC 20009. Dear Ms. Wareham I wish to thank you very much for the copy of the Landmine Monitor report that was sent to the Embassy. This has been sent to Sri Lanka for their comments. I have requested them to send the comments direct to you through your web site. Yours sincerely, Dr. Warnasena Rasaputram Ambassador. Country: South Africa Date Received: 15 Jul 1999
EMBASSY OF SOUTH AFRICA
16 July 1999 Dear Ms. Wareham, Thank you for letter of 21 July 1999 and for the Landmine Monitor Report 1999: Toward a Mine-Free World and its Executive Summary. It is greatly appreciated. It will be passed on to the appropriate section within the Embassy for further comments. Sincerely, Allan Wright EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO AMBASSADOR S SISULU Country: Strata Research Date Received: 28 Jun 1999 We, STRATA RESEARCH hereby state that sentences in the Landmine Monitor First Annual Report, in the Croation report (pages 576-577) as follows: " In 1997. The area of Podunavlje and eastern Slavonija were totally cleared of mines, that includes settlements: Antunovac, Bilje, Ernestinovo, Kopcevo, Apsevci, Donje Novo Selo, Lipovac, Podgradje, Kusonje and Brusnik. That was important for the Peacefull Reintegration Process." is not the information provided by Vanja Sikirica and can not be related with the footnote 31, where Vanja Sikirica was noted as source for another information. That another information, that was actually provided by Vanja Sikirica was the table of mine cleared ares in Croatia in 1998. with breakdown by countries. The above mentined information was taken from the article from the daily newspaper "Vjesnik" (10 February 1998, in annex), where is stated that the mine clearance in that area (settlements) is completed and that in 5,651,289 square meters 4,404 mines are destroyed and 3,086 objects were checked. We apologize once more to all who who have been affected by this missinterpretation. Zagreb, 28 June 1999 Country: Mauritius Date Received: 13 May 1999 Republic of Mauritius MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE 13 May, 1999 Dear Sir/Madam, SUBJECT: Landmine Monitor Report 1999 I am directed to thank you for providing the Mauritius Delegation to the First Meeting of States Parties with a copy of the 1,100 page Landmine Monitor Report 1999. This Report is a major contribution in the implementation of Article 7 of the Ottawa Convention in reporting in a most transparent, systematic and sustained manner the essential elements necessary for the successful elimination of antipersonnel mines. The ICBL deserves congratulations for making available a copy of the Landmine Monitor Report 1999 to all the delegations. It is, however, noted that a factual mis-reporting has occurred at page 43 under the caption pertaining to Mauritius which may convey a wrong information if left uncorrected. The above-mentioned mis-reporting concerns the name of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Republic of Mauritius. It should instead read Hon. Rajkeswur Purryag and not Mohamed Ould Maawiya as erroneously spelled out in the report. The Ministry would, in this connection, appreciate it if the ICBL could kindly arrange to issue an appropriate corrigendum. Thank you for your cooperation. Yours Sincerely, B Gokool for Supervising Officer |
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