Residents disappointed over landmines act

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on April 3, 2006. It reports that four years after a bill that seeks to remove and ban landmines in Taiwan was proposed, the legislators finally reached a consensus about it. Meanwhile, residents of Taiwan's outlying islands have been plagued by landmines. They are now angry that the legislators gave in to the Ministry of National Defense's request that landmines are to be maintained on the islands for military purposes.

According to Article 3 of the recently concluded version of the draft law, which is called the "Landmines Regulation Act", only "anti-personnel mines" fulfilled the definition of landmines. This means that anti-vehicle mines are not covered by the regulation. Worse, another article of the draft law grants the Ministry of National Defense the right to use anti-personnel mines during war. The ministry is therefore allowed to leave all anti-vehicle mines in place and to use anti-personnel mines in the future.

The recently concluded version of the draft law also stipulates that the government should remove anti-personnel mines within 7 yeas and make reparation for the damage caused by landmines.

The bill still has to pass a second and third reading in the Legislature to be enacted.

The Eden Social Welfare Foundation initiated the drafting of the "Landmines Regulation Act". According to the organization, the recently concluded version of the draft law does not meet the requirements of the Mine Ban Treaty. Also known as the Ottawa Convention, the treaty is the international agreement that bans landmines.

Taiwan is currently not a signatory to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Based on the Mine Ban Treaty's interpretation, anti-vehicle mines with anti-handling devices or sensitive fuses that may be triggered off by an unintentional or innocent act are considered "anti-personnel mines" and are therefore banned. Such interpretation was made by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a coalition of 1,200 non-governmental organizations in 60 countries that work for a global ban on landmines. Indeed, many anti-vehicle mines also cause severe civilian suffering.

According to the Eden Social Welfare Foundation, the consequence of using landmines is hard to imagine. The cost of burying a landmine might be as cheap as US$1, but the cost of removing it might be as high as US$100, not to mention the lifelong damage it can inflict on a person. The Ministry of National Defense should think twice before it decides to employ landmines on Taiwan's outlying islands to fend off potential Chinese attacks.

The Kinmen Welfare Promotion Association for the Disabled is another organization that opposes the use of landmines. From its point of view, it is unacceptable that the legislators agreed on the conditional use of landmines rather than supporting the public's appeal for a comprehensive cleanup of the landmines. Life is practically over when one is injured in a landmine blast.

In Kinmen, for example, there was no distinction between minefields and non-minefields during the wartime. Now the island is administrated by a civilian government and lived by ordinary citizens. Although the military have marked potential minefields and fenced them off, there could still be plenty of landmines lying all around the island. Some of the farmers never realized that there were landmines in their farms, until it was too late.

According to this article, the military planted over 100,000 landmines in Kinmen, Matsu and Dong Yin islands during the Battle of Kuningtou in 1949 and the Artillery Bombardment in August 23, 1958. It was a precaution against invasion by Chinese troops. However, many people believe that the military does not have an exact estimate of the sizes and locations of the mined areas.

According to this article, a landmine clearance project was forced to come to a halt in April 2005, when two Zimbabwean mine disposal technicians were killed and another injured in a mine explosion. Since then, about 800 landmines have been left unattended at four temporary storage facilities in Kinmen. Many local residents are now accusing the government of turning a deaf ear to the people's appeals to dispose of the landmines, to identify cracks in their houses that were caused by the explosion, and to compensate them for the losses. About 160 households in three villages were affected by the explosion.

According to the military, landmine-blast casualties in Taiwan's outlying islands reached 102 as of September 2004.