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UXO accident survivor Ho Minh Tien. |
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In a landscape so heavily contaminated with remnants of conflict it is common for people to find dangerous items of unexploded ordnance (UXO) while going about their everyday chores. How a person responds having found such an item can be the difference between life and death.
Understanding this threat to the community, MAG provides a telephone 'hotline' number that enables members of the public to directly report the location of UXO they find.
Quang Tri province |
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View Quang Tri province in a larger map |
“I hate seeing bombs. Whenever I find any, I call MAG immediately,” says Ho Minh Tien, a UXO accident survivor who lives in Tan Lich village, Quang Tri province. "If I don’t do this, someone might get hurt like I did."
MAG cleared agricultural land in Tien’s village in 2007, destroying 31 dangerous items in the process.
However, the scale of contamination in the province is so great that it is not possible to clear all the land in a village. The result is that community members continue to find UXO on land that has not yet been cleared. When they do so, they telephone MAG and make an emergency report.
In the 12-month period from July 2009 to June 2010, MAG received 115 such reports of UXO in the province, 16 of them from this village.
Tien was the most seriously injured of seven victims of an accident in 1992. He lost his left eye, his right arm and suffered various other wounds. His recovery took more than a decade, and involved intensive medical treatment. “We spent all of our money to help him recover,” recalls his mother, through her tears.
Tien’s family was one of those who returned to Tan Lich after the war to find their village lifeless. “What I saw were hundreds of bomb craters,” remembers Tien’s father, Ho Minh Tuong.
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Tien planting rubber trees. [Photos: MAG Vietnam] |
“During the war, this area was a focal point in the McNamara defence system [a system of barriers intended to stop the movement of troops and supplies between North and South Vietnam], so all 300 households left. After the war, there were so many bombs left that the majority of them never returned."
Those who did come back realised that they still had to cultivate the land if they did not want to live in hunger: “We just had to accept we might get hurt,” Tuong said. Before MAG worked in the village, almost all the items of UXO they found were re-buried in pits. “We did this time after time, day after day, year after year."
After his land was cleared, Tien planted rubber and cajeput trees. “We were confident [about the safety of the land after clearance] so we could [also] grow two crops of cassava, which earned us about US$200,” said Tien. “I strongly believe that in four or five years our family will have better living conditions.”
Another plot of cleared land in the village has now been planted with acacia trees. The income from this will be used as the common fund for Tan Lich village’s community activities.
“MAG should maintain its work as long as possible because we don’t know when there will be no more bombs in the soil,” said Tien. “I hope that no one else will fall victim to UXO like me.”
MAG thanks the following current donors to its Vietnam operations: Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, U.S. Department of State; UKaid / Department for International Development; NVESD.
Reporting by Truong Thu Thuy, National Communications Manager, MAG Vietnam
22 September 2010
See also:
- Why does MAG work in Vietnam?
- Latest news and case studies from MAG Vietnam
- PHOTO GALLERY: How MAG works in Vietnam
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