Civil society hits use of landmines

From the Visayan Daily Star (Jun 11): Civil society hits use of landmines

Members of civil society in Negros Occidental yesterday said in a signed statement that they view with much alarm the increasing use of landmines as an offensive weapon by the communist insurgents in its “protracted people’s war.”

The statement titled “Not In Our Name, Please,” noted that the public has recently been regaled by macabre news of deaths, mangled bodies and shattered lives caused by landmines.

In Compostela Valley, an improvised landmine explosion wounded several soldiers and civilians along the Tagum City-Mawab Highway, even as – four days later – it also took the life of a young mother, they said.

On May 27, a command-detonated landmine placed in the middle of the road preluded the ambush of PNP personnel on board an Isuzu Elf truck, they added.

“Such atrocity has no place in civilized society,” they said.

They said the Communist Party of the Philippines-New Peoples Army’s use of anti-personnel landmines is a heinous conduct of warfare using an “indiscriminate weapon.”

A landmine explosion does not select its targets, whether combatants or civilians, soldiers or innocent women and children who are protected under the international Humanitarian Law, they said.

“We assert that its use is a violation of human rights in situations of armed conflict,” the statement also said.

The matter needs to be brought up with the International Campaign To Ban Landmines. Worldwide attention should be called to and censure brought to bear on the CPP-NPA-NDF for their terroristic use of landmines in their guerilla warfare in the Philippines, they said.

They called on the CPP-NPA-NDF to obtain their ideological ends through non-violent means.

“No family should be made to suffer the fathomless anguish of losing a loved one, no community be so gravely traumatized by an insurgency war you claim you are waging in the people’s behalf,” they said.

http://www.visayandailystar.com/2013/June/11/topstory10.htm