Tag Archives: UXO

International UXO/Mine Awareness Day

Today is Easter, a day for Christians to focus on promises fulfilled and hope for the future. Here in Laos, we spent the morning focusing on the same concepts but in a different context: International UXO/Mine Awareness Day.

In the capital city of the most heavily bombed country on earth, Tony and I joined the crowd at the Patuxai Monument early this morning, dressed in our Team Dai “Ban Cluster Bombs” jerseys. Several organizations had set up informational displays about UXO (unexploded ordnance) and the efforts to rehabilitate bomb victims and educate communities at risk. Hundreds of people showed up to march in support of banning cluster munitions, so we paraded about 5K from the monument to the Presidential Palace and back.

According to the United Nations:

Throughout the Second Indochina War (1964 to 1973), more than 580,000 bombing missions (every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years) and wide-ranging ground battles dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance on Lao PDR. Additionally, over 260 million cluster munitions were used, of which an estimated 80 million remain live as a result of high failure rates. Today UXO litters vast areas of the country; approximately 25 percent of 10,000 villages are contaminated.

Tony and I cannot believe that we never learned about this in school. We feel fortunate to live here and witness first-hand the selfless work under way to excavate the bombs, reach out to bomb victims, and educate communities to prevent further casualties. These organizations from all over the world are living the message of Easter: promise and hope.

A quick speech. Every red dot on that map represents a load of bombs that were dropped there.
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Release some balloons (no need to address the environmental impact of that at this moment …)
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And off we go for the UXO/Mine Awareness March.
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We walked with friends Alison and Todd, teachers at VIS, and their kids Sam and Kira.
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We cheated a bit and crossed the median just short of the Presidential Palace.
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A sign at the monument. I just never get tired of quirky translations.
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Phonsavanh Tour & Homeward Bound

Our three-day bicycle trek ultimately dropped us in Xieng Khuang Province, which is generally known for two things: unexploded ordnance (UXO) and the Plain of Jars.

Here’s what the Lonely Planet guidebook says about UXO in Xieng Khuang:

Unexploded munitions, mortar shells, white phosphorus canisters (used to mark bomb targets), land mines and cluster bombs of French, Chinese, American, Russian and Vietnamese manufacture left behind by nearly 100 years of warfare have affected up to half of the population in terms of land deprivation and accidental injury or death. A preponderance of the reported UXO accidents that have occurred in Xieng Khuan happened during the first five years immediately following the end of the war, when many villagers returned to areas of the province they had evactuated years earlier. Today about 40% of the estimated 60 casualties per year are children, who continue to play with found UXO – especially the harmless-looking, ball-shaped ‘bomb light units’ (BLUs, or bombies) left behind by cluster bombs – in spite of warnings. Hunters also open or attempt to open UXO to extract gunpowder and steel pellets for their long-barrelled muskets – a risky ploy that has claimed many casualties. Several groups are working steadily to clear the province of UXO, including the Lao National UXO Programme (UXO Lao), financed by a UN trust fund that has significantly increased the availability of multilateral aid for this purpose.

I took these shots at a UXO visitors center.
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We had a few spare hours before our flight back to Vientiane on Tuesday, so we hired a couple vans to take us out to see the Plain of Jars. The 2,000-year-old stone jars are scattered across several areas on the outskirts of Phonsavanh and remain a mystery. Were they used for human burial? Wine fermentation? Rice storage? Nobody knows for sure.

The UXO has to be cleared before they can excavate the jars.
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Here’s a marker at one Plain of Jars site that shows the area has been cleared of UXO.
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Nina (from the UK), Nanny, me, Julie. Nanny and Julie are both from my mom’s neck of the woods in Philadelphia. Small world!
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Oops, my bad.
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After a quick lunch, we headed to the bustling Phonsavanh Airport and caught our flight home.
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