Dark Harvest

Vehicles Like This Oxcart Frequently Detonate Land Mines

Another farmer and his wife killed, another orphan. The war is long over, yet it still goes on. But the casualties are not soldiers, they are farmers and children and livestock. Long-sown, deadly seeds wait silently in the earth to claim another generation of innocent victims.

Armies leave behind them a legacy of deadly minefields to cover their retreats or to defend perimeters against attack. Cambodia and Laos were seeded with Chinese, Soviet, American and homemade explosive anti-personnel devices; nobody knows how many - millions certainly. The harvest of those seeds is death and dismemberment. In Cambodia's Siem Reap Province alone, there have been more than 27,000 victims of landmines. Like the landmines, the exact number is unknown.

Aki Ra was 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge murdered his parents. They were farmers. By the age of ten he was carrying an AK-47 rifle and was proficient in the making and laying of landmines and booby traps. In 1979, when he was 13, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and eventually overthrew the brutal Khmer Rouge Marxist regime. He was offered the choice of joining the Vietnamese army and fighting the Khmer Rouge or being executed outright. In 1989, when the Vietnamese left, Aki Ra was conscripted into the Cambodian army to continue fighting against remnants of the Khmer Rouge in their jungle strongholds. When the United Nations peacekeeping forces arrived n 1993, he went to work for them helping to clear the landmines he once helped to plant. He was 20 years old then; for 15 of those years he was witness to the most horrendous terror and bloodshed in modern history.

The large cluster bomb casing would explode above ground, discharging 600 bomblets ('bombies'). Many nations are aiding in the ongoing effort in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to make the land safe for farming.

This is how he describes first coming to Siem Reap to work for the UN. “The UN went around this area and asked many Cambodian people to work for them helping to clear the millions of landmines after the war. When I first came into the town of Siem Reap, I was amazed at many things I saw there. I had only known a life in the jungle and we lived without electricity, toilets, roads. Even transport was a whole new world to me because I had only ever seen trucks and tanks and occasionally very old motorbikes. When I saw all the big cars, I could not believe my eyes. The concrete houses were also fascinating to me because I had only ever seen shacks and huts. I touched the walls of the houses to see what they were all about. When the UN put a huge cinema screen up in town the people came to wonder at the film. When the cars and tanks moved on the screen, many people ran away as they thought they were going to come right off the screen into the audience”.

Applying himself to learn English, he was given the opportunity to go to school. “…and so all round, my life took a dramatic turn for the better”. He was taught how to use metal detectors and other sophisticated equipment to detect landmines, how to dig them up and how to defuse and dispose of them. When the UN left in 1994, Aki Ra decided the best thing for himself and Cambodia was to carry on clearing mines, without the benefit of the specialized equipment he had been trained to use. He began collecting relics from the war and eventually, with money saved from working as a tour guide, began building a museum to house his collection of weapons, mines and other implements of war. He was finally able to open his museum in Siem Reap in 1999. He is dedicated to helping foreigners “to understand the full extent of the horror of the landmines that we still have in Cambodia” and uses his museum as a means to collect donations needed to fund his ongoing, dangerous work. Not funded or sponsored by any organization Aki Ra must rely entirely on donations and volunteers for his ongoing mine-clearing efforts.

These are only some types of the explosive devices being recovered by UXO (UneXploded Ordinance) groups and individuals like Aki Ra

The baby, who survived the anti-tank mine is now 8 years old and growing up in Aki Ra's family; one of the lucky ones, growing up with love in a country that has known such recent violence and hatred and wholesale death. But despite the peace, the war still claims its victims every day.

Cambodia Rice Fields

This is Aki Ra's plea: “Please help me in my mission to rid the country of these abominable weapons. To help me continue my work, please tell your friends to come and visit us at the landmine museum and if you wish you may donate something, as my museum is not government funded”.

Please help stop this dark harvest, measured in the reaping of innocent lives.

You may contact Aki Ra at:-
The Landmine Museum
Siem Reap, Angkor
Cambodia
Tel: (855) 012 630 446