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Landmines take a heavy toll in lives and livelihoods...
"A dozen or so years ago, Mee Reh was helping to secure a rebel-held area of Burma’s eastern Karenni State with landmines. Today he is helping to secure a new life for landmine victims.
Mee Reh, 38, is one of 11 workers making artificial limbs at a small workshop in a Karenni refugee camp in Thailand’s northern Mae Hong Son province. The enterprise is run by Handicap International, an international organization working to ban the use of landmines and to help landmine victims.
Mee Reh is himself the victim of a landmine explosion, losing a leg while he was in action with Karenni National Progressive Party forces against Burma Army troops in the early 1990s. He found medical care in neighboring Thailand, where he was fitted with an artificial leg. After his recovery he found work in the Handicap International Workshop, which has so far manufactured around 100 prostheses.
Although there are no official statistics on landmine casualties in Burma, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines estimates that around 1,500 people die or suffer serious injury every year...
