A war is always a terrible thing, but some of its most pernicious effects are felt after the war is over. An example of this is anti-personnel mines, a type of land weapon that can continue to kill and maim civilians for decades. As early as 1997, protests against its use led to the signing of the Ottawa Treaty, to which 164 States have adhered, and which prohibits its use, storage and transfer. Despite the goal set for 2025 to live in a world "free of mines", these are still sadly present today.
So it is with the hundreds of thousands that have been produced in Russian-owned factories to seed large swaths of Ukraine and Karabakh in Azerbaijan. With the aim of reflecting on and raising awareness about this serious attack on human rights, the international conference Bound by Pain was held on May 31 in Berlin. The effects of antipersonnel mines. Civilian victims in the minefields, which focused on the situation of the victims from a medical, psychological and legal perspective.
The conference was attended by Dr. Sofia Tkazky, member of the British Psychological Society; Dr. Sven Mardian, Senior Consultant and Head of Trauma Surgery at the Charité Hospital in Berlin; Merl Florstedt, Head of Corporate Communication at Ottobock SE
The impact of antipersonnel mines goes beyond the deaths or injuries. Family members or neighbors who live with great emotional pain and constant fear of losing their life or being maimed are also victims. This fear can turn simple acts such as visiting a cemetery or going off the beaten path into an odyssey. The trauma caused by this weaponry lives on for generations, as children grow up in a world where danger is a constant.
The use of mines in civilian areas has been repeatedly denounced by various Western media, especially in contexts such as the current Ukrainian War or the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani lands. The American political review magazine Townhall, for example, has condemned the “Russian tradition” of land-mining, dating back to Soviet times and continuing today, both by the Russian occupiers of Ukraine and of their allies in the Caucasus.
As Dr. Tkazky pointed out during her speech, if these actions against civilians had not been carried out by a regular army, they would have been classified as terrorism. The mines “are hidden on purpose in civilian territories, inside innocent objects like toys, and also in piles of garbage that accumulate in cemeteries,” she explained. When the civilians try to clear the graves of their ancestors, the mines explode. Tkazky qualifies these actions as "war crimes", "terrorist acts or genocide", since the intention is none other than "to scare the population away from their homes".
The mining of playgrounds or schools is a clear reflection of the doctrine of dehumanization of the enemy that the civilized world abandoned after the Second World War, but that Russia considers valid. To try to stop the terrible effects of mine laying, indefatigable volunteers today clear the territories liberated from the Russian occupation of Ukraine and the Armenian occupation of Karabakh.
One of these people is Rustam Maggeramov, a resident of Ukraine for 20 years and a direct witness to the horrors of war. Since the beginning of the war, Rustam has provided support to Ukrainian military and civilians, delivering food, medicine and ammunition, and helping to evacuate families in occupied territories.
It is difficult for Rustam to talk about his recent experiences, which go back to the death of his brother during the liberation of Karabakh. Looking at the boy Bogdan, he remembers, for example, Gismet, "who was blown up by a mine buried in a pasture." Maggeramov is clear that, despite all the efforts of the volunteers, the mines will continue to kill, “if active demining of the liberated areas does not begin”, which, according to experts, can take up to 30 years.
Ivan Sokol, director of the Department of Civil Defense of the Ukrainian Military-Civil Administration of the Kharkiv region (an area with 1.25 million hectares of land considered dangerous), explains that "Russian troops have been planting mines for 15 months" and that "seek, on purpose, to kill the civilian population." In the Ukraine they do not have enough civilian sappers. “We urgently need specialized demining teams,” Sokol explains. “We know that Turkish minesweepers are used in Azerbaijan, but they are not cheap. We have developed our own machine, which eliminates 99% of antipersonnel mines”.
In Kharkiv, they train operators, and they assemble and repair, in workshops and factories, machines that cost about $150,000, a very low figure compared to others that perform the same function.
The region is "an example of symbiosis between the government and the volunteers," adds Sokol. Anyone wishing to help finance demining equipment can turn to the Ukrainian Kharkiv contigo fund, which is running a large-scale fundraising program for the purchase of minesweepers and clearing work in mined areas.
Actions like these serve to offer some hope to territories with a civilian population devastated by violence. At the same time, the holding of the aforementioned international conference in Berlin has confirmed the need for a collective involvement on the part of the States and the European citizenry in helping civilians, duly assisting injured people; and also to resolutely combat the scourge of antipersonnel mines which, so far this year alone, has already caused more than 260 deaths in Ukraine.
