Cambodia's poor scavenge unexploded ordnance

SEP VILLAGE, Cambodia (AP) -- Cambodians mark February 24 as Land Mine Awareness Day, a grim reminder of their country's war-torn past but a symbol of hope for fighting a deadly scourge.

Meetings and speeches were set for Saturday to drive home the message that, although the country's decades of war and civil conflict ended eight years ago, their brutal legacy remains in the form of land mines and unexploded ordnance, or UXO.

For at least several hundred poverty-beset Cambodian villagers, however, that legacy represents a livelihood.

Armed with homemade metal detectors, they risk injury and death to comb rice fields and hillsides -- some littered with mines or bombs -- for pieces of scrap metal they can sell.

An estimated 4 million to 6 million mines and other pieces of unexploded ordnance remain buried in Cambodia. Land Mine Awareness Day was established in 2000 to highlight the problem.

Mines killed or maimed at least 418 people last year, according to Khem Sophoan, director general of the government's land mine clearing agency, the Cambodian Mine Action Center or CMAC.

The Land Mine Risk/UXO Risk Education project of the Cambodian Red Cross hopes to reduce the number of victims to 200 by 2010, and to zero by 2012.

But good intentions cannot overcome the lack of economic opportunities that drives men like Chong Nhep, 29, to hunt for this dangerous buried treasure with a metal detector and a hoe.
Watching him work is unnerving. Alerted by the detector, he digs with his hoe and finds the broken tail of a mortar shell.

Picking it up with his bare hand, he tosses it into his bag and calmly carries on scanning the ground.

"I usually don't know if it is a land mine, bomb or unexploded ordnance," he said. "But one thing I am sure of is there must be some metal."

If lucky, he said, he can collect 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of scrap metal a day; on a bad day he might fetch 2 kilograms (4 pounds).

One kilogram (2.2 pounds) of scrap steel sells for 1,000 riel (US$0.25; euro0.20), but aluminum and bronze pieces fetch 3,000 riel (US$0.75; euro0.60) and 5,000 riel (US$1.2; euro0.90) respectively.

"This is a very dangerous occupation that we have constantly tried to prevent," said CMAC's Khem Sophoan. He said scavengers often try to evade authorities.

Nonetheless, a cottage industry has developed to produce metal detectors.

At Sep village, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the capital, Phnom Penh, 35-year-old Sem Seng has turned his radio repair shop into a lucrative business by making the detectors. He has sold about 300 in the past four years.

"I first did not know how to make (metal detectors), until one day a scavenger brought a broken detector to my shop and asked me to fix it," he said, sitting by a wooden desk strewn with radio parts and repair tools.

Wearing only a loincloth over his underpants, he spoke without taking his eyes off a detector he was assembling.

"In this area, I am the only person who can produce it," he said.

A detector is made of locally available material, including used radio parts. It consists of a plastic handle connected to an aluminum hoop, which is wired to a transmitter box. The box is attached to an amplifier that sends a signal to a headphone.

It runs on four flashlight batteries and sells for about 100,000 riel (US$25; euro19).

Khem Sophoan said that such business is illegal, and that local authorities have been asked to crack down on it.

Sem Seng said police regularly visit his shop -- but only to collect payoffs to turn a blind eye to his business.

"As long as the people still collect scrap metal, I still keep the production going because there are a lot of poor people, and their job is collecting metal," he said.

Chong Nhep, the scrap hunter, said police used to confiscate his detector but would return it for a bribe of 50,000 riel (US$12; euro9).

At a nearby village, Hap Mat, 38, recalled how he had been scavenging in 2003, when his hoe hit a bomb fuse and triggered an explosion.

He was wounded in his right arm and thigh. A friend nearby was wounded in the abdomen, while another lost sight in one eye and had to have one of his arms amputated.

"Since that day I swore with my life that I will never scavenge for metal again," Hap Mat said.
Still, the potential rewards remain hard to resist.

"I don't think I can find another better job than to be a scrap metal collector," said father of four Chuk Sok Khoy, 28.

Without any safety measures or protective gear, he asks a spirit to safeguard him each morning before he goes scavenging.

One day about three years ago, he thought his lucky day had arrived when his detector emitted a particularly strong signal.

"I thought I found a huge treasure. But after I dug it up, I saw a very big B-52 bomb," he said. Disappointed, he walked away from the find.