Myanmar led world in landmine victims in 2023: monitor

BANGKOK: Landmines and unexploded munitions claimed more victims in Myanmar than in any other country last year, a monitor said on Wednesday, with over 1,000 people killed or wounded in the country.

Decades of sporadic conflict between the military and ethnic rebel groups have left the Southeast Asian country littered with deadly landmines and munitions.

But the military’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 has turbocharged conflict in the country and birthed dozens of newer “People’s Defence Forces” now battling to topple the military.

Anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war killed or wounded 1,003 people in Myanmar in 2023, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday.

There were 933 landmine casualties in Syria, 651 in Afghanistan and 580 in Ukraine, the ICBL said in its latest Landmine Monitor report.

Myanmar is not a signatory to the United Nations convention that prohibits the use, stockpiling or development of anti-personnel mines.

The ICBL said there had been a “significant increase” of anti-personnel mines use by the military in recent years, including around infrastructure like mobile phone towers and energy pipelines.

Those infrastructure are often targeted by its opponents.

Myanmar’s military has been repeatedly accused of atrocities and war crimes during decades of internal conflict.

ICBL said it had seen evidence of junta troops forcing civilians to walk in front of its units to “clear” mine-affected areas.

It said it had reviewed photos that indicated anti-personnel mines manufactured by Myanmar were captured by the military’s opponents every month between January 2022 and September 2024, “in virtually every part of the country.”

More than three million people have been displaced in Myanmar by the post-coup conflict, according to the UN.

All sides in the fighting were using landmines “indiscriminately,” the United Nations Children’s Fund said in April.

Rebel groups have told AFP they also lay mines in some areas under their control.

The ICBL said at least 5,757 people had been casualties of landmines and explosive remnants of war across the world in 2023.

Of those, 1,983 were killed and 3,663 wounded.

Civilians made up 84 percent of all recorded casualties, it said.

At least 4,710 casualties of mines and explosive remnants of war were recorded in 2022, with 1,661 of them killed and 3,015 wounded, according to ICBL. The survival status of 34 casualties was unknown.