Mines differnt from victim's viewpoint - landmine victims - Commentary - Column

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 24, 1997 by Mary Evelyn Jegen

This morning I brought Amelia to morning prayer with me. We sat together imagining Jesus, who told his disciples to let the children come to him. "Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hand on them" (Mark 10:16).

I saw Jesus put his arm around Amelia's shoulder and look long at her' artificial eyeballs. Then he looked at her left leg that ended with the stump and at her fingerless hand. He was crying. I still find it unnerving and embarrassing to see a man cry. But I remember that the gospels tell us that Jesus wept.

I wonder if those who wrote speeches for President Clinton defending the U.S. decision not to sign the treaty-banning the use of land mines have ever looked carefully and long at a land mine victim.

Every 22 minutes someone is killed by a land mine or is blinded or loses an arm or a leg. In response to an international outcry about this horror, representatives from more than a hundred nations will meet in December in Ottawa to sign a treaty banning the production, stockpiling, use and transfer of antipersonnel land mines. The United States announced in September that it would not sign the treaty. Why?

A land mine looks very different to a military strategist, a weapons manufacturer and a land mine victim. I decided to try to see the land mine from the victim's perspective.

To do this, I used a picture in a publication on land mines from the International Committee of the Red Cross. For two weeks I spent time with that picture of Amelia. She was 11 in 1994 when she stepped on a land mine while gathering wood for her grandmother near a village in Mozambique. Her life was changed forever.

I look long at her artificial eyeballs that cannot return my gaze. I look at her left leg that ends in a stump below the knee. I look at her fingerless hand. I feel sick and want to turn away. But I have promised to keep company with Amelia for two weeks through this picture.

I am getting tired of Amelia and want her to go away. I can easily dismiss her from my thoughts. After all, I tell myself, she is only a figment of my imagination. No, I admit, she is a girl with a name who lives in Mozambique. I keep thinking of her as 11, the age at which she stepped on the land mine. According to the Red Cross account, nobody visited her at the hospital for seven months after the accident.

When she was taken back to the village where she had lived, there was no place for her, so she was returned to the hospital. What has happened to Amelia? She is 14 now. Where is she? What lies in store for her?

A single land mine victim is a tragedy; a million land mine victims is a statistic. Again this morning I found myself wanting to get away from Amelia. I was questioning whether this exercise I started eight days ago was such a sound idea. Is it good for my mental health? Is this the way I should be meditating and praying? Something told me not to dismiss Amelia until I had resolved these questions.

I am beginning to realize that attending to this picture and account of Amelia is not an escape from reality but a way of entering reality more deeply. I know that understanding requires that the mind be tightly locked to the heart. I also remember hearing about the "pornography of misery." Surely those who take pictures of land mine victims want to help them. Exposure to pictures of amputees should evoke compassion and determination to help eliminate land mines, but this is not necessarily the case. Uncritical viewing may simply leave the imagination and emotions dulled or numbed.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).

I am struggling to come to terms with my own reactions: anger, shame, confusion, restlessness and clockwatching. This morning I suddenly realized that Amelia will never look at a clock, never do anything requiring two hands, never walk or run like other girls. I have a gnawing sense of something akin to guilt, and I recognize it not as guilt but as an imperious call to personal responsibility. I am a citizen with access to people who make life and death decisions about others, and I have excused myself from learning the most effective ways to reach them on behalf of Amelia and hundreds of thousands like her. I see clearly that my prayer with Amelia has been a prayer of enlightenment.

Eliminating land mines is a work squarely on human shoulders. Paradoxically, we cannot do it without God's help. With Amelia, I have received the comfort promised to those who mourn. I promise Amelia that I will not run away from what I have seen. I will not leave you, Amelia.

You can't develop a country, you cannot set up an infrastructure ... until you resolve the de-mining issue. And that's the key word that everybody's got to damn well understand, because if you don't resolve that issue, you're not going to resolve anything else."

--Lt. Col. George Focsaneanu Cambodia, March 1993

Removing land mines is difficult, dangerous and expensive. So far the amount of money committed to mine clearance is only a fraction of what is needed. A typical mechanical flail for large-scale mine clearance costs about $350,000. Useful as this is for the first stage of mine removal in some situations, mine clearance also requires work by hand. Annual insurance premiums of $15,000 are considered standard for clearance personnel. This may be reasonable for those from wealthy economies, but it is meaningless for de-miners in impoverished areas with annual per capita incomes well under $500 a year.