[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 19 (Monday, February 28, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: February 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
LANDMINES
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President this week in the Russell Building Rotunda,
there is an exhibit of photographs which I urge all Senators and staff
to stop by and see. They are photographs of victims of anti-personnel
landmines. There are also several actual landmines on display--with the
explosive removed, of course--and some printed materials which describe
in shocking detail the global problem of landmines.
This exhibit is not meant to offend anyone. In fact, the photographs
that were selected do not depict the worst aspects of landmine
injuries. But they do show the terrible consequences of landmines for
hundreds of thousands of civilians around the world.
Over the past 2 years, the Congress has taken bold steps to focus
world attention on the epidemic of civilian casualties from landmines.
Two years ago, my amendment to impose a 1-year moratorium on exports of
anti-personnel landmines from the United States was signed into law by
President Bush. Last year, the Senate voted 100-0 to extend the
moratorium for an additional 3 years.
On Veterans Day last year, I went to the United Nations to introduce
on behalf of the United States a resolution calling on all countries to
support an international export moratorium. That resolution passed the
General Assembly unanimously on December 16.
These are more than symbolic gestures, but they are only a beginning.
By themselves, they will do little to stop the enormous numbers of
civilian casualties from landmines.
Today, despite the dramatic rise in public and media interest in
dealing with this problem, far more mines are being strewn than are
being cleared. In the former Yugoslavia, 3 million mines have been
scattered in the past 2 years. Millions of mines contaminate Georgia,
Azerbaijan, and Tajikistan.
Let me give some examples of the incredible size of the landmine
problem.
In Angola, over one-third of the country is infested with mines.
In Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of people have been maimed, 8
out of 10 mine victims die before they reach a hospital.
In northern Somalia, there are 23,000 amputees. Over two-thirds are
under the age of 15.
Over a third of all mine casualties are women and children.
Mr. President, during the Second World War, Korea and a few other
large scale conventional wars, landmines were used as defensive weapons
against enemy soldiers--to guard a perimeter, or channel the enemy into
an area. But that changed by the Vietnam war, and since then the
overwhelming majority of mines have been used as offensive weapons
against civilians, scattered indiscriminately by the millions.
Cheap to buy, easy to make and transport, mines have become a weapon
of choice of Third World armies and insurgent groups. Their purpose is
not just to maim and kill, but to destroy the social and economic
fabric of a society by isolating whole communities, depopulating vast
areas of territory, and preventing the return of refugess.
In dozens of countries where people survive by growing their own
food, huge areas of scarce arable land have become useless death traps
from landmines.
Mr. President, years ago, the world outlawed chemical weapons because
they do not discriminate between a soldier and a civilian. Our military
also recognized that if we used chemical weapons we would endanger our
own troops, because chemical weapons will poison whoever breathes the
air.
The world condemned Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons
against the Kurds. When Iraqi troops dynamited the Kuwaiti oil wells,
spewing millions of barrels of crude oil over the desert, we called it
environmental warfare.
I challenge anyone to explain to me how this is different from
landmines.
The State Department has said, and I quote: ``landmines may be the
most toxic and widespread pollution facing mankind.''
In Vietnam, over 7,300 American soldiers were killed by mines or
booby traps, and many more were injured.
Landmines can be scattered from the air by the hundreds-per-minute. A
mine then lies in wait for weeks, months, or years, until an
unsuspecting person, usually a civilian, steps on it. A mine the size
of a shoe polish can is powerful enough to blow the leg off an adult,
or pulverize a child.
Landmines are easy to lay, but extremely difficult to detect and
life-threatening to remove. They blend in with the soil or ground
cover, and are quickly obscured by a layer of dust or vegetation. They
are often made of plastic, undetectable to metal detectors.
Imagine trying to get rid of millions of mines strewn
indiscriminately over an area the size of Oklahoma. That is Cambodia
today, where 1 of every 236 people is an amputee.
This photograph shows a typical Cambodian street scene. A pair of men
with crutches, each missing part of a leg.
Another photograph shows a young Mozambican boy. He lost both his
legs from a mine. He is one of tens of thousands of children around the
world whose lives have been shattered by landmines.
Mr. President, nobody doubts that landmines have some military use.
What weapon does not? Anything that can wound or kill has a military
use. But there are 100 million landmines littering the world that are
maiming and killing hundreds of innocent people a month. If children
walking to school or playing in a field were getting their legs blow
off in Little Rock, Portland, ME, or Topeka, KS, you can bet we would
be doing everything possible to stop it.
Instead, it is happening in foreign places where medical care is
often almost nonexistent, and physical labor is necessary for survival.
It is time to ask whether landmines are so militarily necessary that
they are worth the immense cost that society is forced to pay to repair
the enormous damage, and the horrendous suffering they cause.
It is time to ask whether we really need a weapon whose victims are
80 percent innocent civilians. Is that something we should tolerate? I
do not think we should.
Over the next several months I intend to speak often on this floor
about the landmine problem. There is tremendous public interest in
strong international action to stop this scourge. A global campaign to
ban landmines, supported by UNICEF, the Vietnam Veterans of America
Foundation, and over 80 other non-governmental organizations around the
world is gaining members every week.
An U.N. conference on landmines is planned for late next year. In
preparation for that conference, three experts meetings are scheduled
this year in Geneva. The first is being held this week.
The administration plans to actively participate in these meetings,
and I have urged it to seek advisory status for Members of Congress and
their staffs, and observer status for non-governmental organizations
that have an expertise in this area. This is essential to ensure full
consideration of all the issues, including an in-depth examination of
the military use of mines versus their effects on civil society.
I have also urged the administration to seek the broadest possible
agenda for negotiations on the full range of issues.
The central goal of these meetings should be to answer the following
questions:
How can the production, stockpiling, export, transfer, possession and
use of mines be limited so they do not endanger civilians?
Can such limitations be enforced in the real world?
All options should be fully considered, up to and including a total
ban on the production, possession or use of anti-personnel landmines.
In addition, I plan to hold hearings on the landmine problem, as well
as introduce legislation which builds on the anti-personnel landmine
export moratorium amendment that was unanimously supported in the
Senate last year.
Mr. President, landmines have become weapons of terror for hundreds
of millions of innocent people around the world. We can change that.
The explosion in media and public attention on the landmine problem in
the past year has shown that people everywhere want to put an end to
this carnage.
I ask unanimous consent that a February 28, 1994, article in the New
York Times on landmines be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Red Cross to Ask U.N. To Limit Land Mines
United Nations, Feb. 27--The International Committee of the
Red Cross, at a meeting of the United Nations Disarmament
Committee on Monday in Geneva, plans to call for a complete
ban on the use of antipersonnel mines.
The meeting, the first of three, is to prepare for a 1995
conference to consider changes in the 1980 Geneva Convention
on limiting the use of weapons deemed to be ``excessively
injurious or to have indiscriminate effects.''
The ban would not cover antitank mines, which are bigger
and thus easier to locate, more expensive and not as widely
scattered.
The Red Cross also wants to outlaw or sharply restrict the
industrial development of laser weapons, which inflict
permanent blindness. ``Blinding as a method of warfare has to
be outlawed now,'' Cornelio Sommaruga, president of Red
Cross, said by telephone from Geneva.
He also said the Red Cross wanted to strengthen the 1980
convention by improving the verification of compliance and
extending the provisions to include civil wars. ``Most wars
today are civil wars, and it is illogical to ban the use of
certain weapons against foreigners but allow them against
your own people,'' he said.
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