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as many injuries & deaths occur after people handle landmines. |
Under no circumstances should you touch, hold, carry or push a landmine or unexploded ordnance (UXO). Even if the 'expert' tells you that it is safe to touch, you should consider that 'experts' also have accidents. All mines are potentially dangerous with some containing anti- handling devices that cause it to detonate with a slight tilt.
When I first entered a heavily mined country, Cambodia 1990, I was very keen to see and feel a mine. The first time I saw a real landmine was in the Thai Border Police office in Aranyaprathet, Thailand. The officers were very proud of their bucket full of mines that had been found on their side of the Cambodian border. Luckily Anne Campbell my colleague who had been working with mines in Afghanistan for many years, gave me sufficient warnings not to touch. Anne, was not embarrassed when she made them all laugh at her running behind a flimsy metal cabinet after one of the 'boys' started to unscrew the top of an anti-tank mine (if it had exploded it would have destroyed half the building).
It took me a few visits to the hospitals before I started to understand the full extent of a landmine injury and what insidious horrible devices they are. I came to understand the full consequences of life without limbs, especially in Cambodia where amputees can be looked upon as 'bad' people. (This comes partly from a misinterpretation of the concept of 'karma'. Many Cambodians feel amputees must have done something very bad in their last life).
There was no way I want to become an amputee
and experience the problems and issues I see my disabled friends have to
deal with everyday.
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DO NOT TOUCH MINES MAIN POINTS
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