c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ In a flash, on December 18, 1981, Tun Channareth was transformed from a young soldier in the resistance army of battle-scarred Cambodia into a warrior for peace in his country and throughout the world.

Channareth, called Reth, was changed forever when he stepped on an anti-personnel landmine near the Cambodian-Thai border and lost both legs.

Now, during most of the year, 37-year-old Reth builds wheelchairs as part of the Jesuit Service wheelchair staff in Cambodia, tailoring each chair to the needs of those who will use them.

But in a two-day visit to Washington that began Thursday (May 15), Reth brought a clear message: An international ban on landmines is urgent.

Reth joined religious and humanitarian organizations in lobbying Congress and challenging President Clinton to fulfill the president’s year-old promise to achieve a comprehensive international ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and deployment of landmines.”The world has to get together on this issue,”Reth said through an interpreter after addressing a news conference in the Dirksen Senate building.

Reth’s visit to the United States, which also includes an appearance at the United Nations in New York and the York Center Church of the Brethren in Chicago, is sponsored by Church World Service (CWS), the humanitarian relief, development and refugee assistance arm of the National Council of Churches. CWS is involved in mine clearance and awareness efforts in Cambodia, Mozambique and Bosnia.

CWS and Lutheran World Relief (LWR) are part of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL), an umbrella organization seeking to unequivocally ban the weapons, which have killed or maimed 26,000 people since May 1996, according to the campaign.”This is a weapon which ought to be outlawed because it’s morally reprehensible,”said Mary Wareham, coordinator of the Washington-based USCBL, adding that one person is killed or maimed by a landmine every 22 minutes. The Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation oversees both the U.S. and international campaigns.

The United States has yet to actively instigate a landmine ban, yet church organizations; religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama; humanitarian organizations, including UNICEF; and more than 50 countries agree a complete international ban is necessary and achievable.

The issue will come before the international community once again at a December 1997 meeting in Ottawa, Canada.

According to Wareham, because China is”openly hostile to a ban,”the United States has not aggressively pushed for it because the U.S. government does not consider support for the ban”universal.”However, the United States is a member of the”Ottawa group,”which supports a global ban.

Landmines were first used during World War II as defensive weapons to protect a perimeter from enemy attack. As technology developed, landmines came to be used as offensive weapons, specifically targeted at civilians. The weapons are especially pervasive in countries with internal disputes _ such as Cambodia, Angola and Afghanistan _ and are indiscriminately scattered in fields and along rural paths.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., longtime advocate of a landmine ban, accepted a sizeable petition from USCBL, CWS and LWR and pledged to urge Congress to agree to a ban.”This is more than a strategic security concern,”said Leahy,”this is a moral issue.” The petition, containing more than 110,000 signatures collected since May 1996, was arranged in bundles and bound with the red tape used as a warning that an area is strewn with mines.

On Friday (May 16), the first anniversary of Clinton’s unfulfilled pledge to ban landmines internationally, Reth and others will hold a rally in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. In addition to more petitions, participants will bring shoes to the rally to represent lost limbs.

Although Cambodia, Angola and Afghanistan are the three nations most devastated by landmines _ there are 10 million known mines in both Afghanistan and Cambodia and 15 million in Angola _ there are more than a dozen nations struggling with the issue.

(OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE.)

A half-hour film,”Small Targets: Landmines and Children in Mozambique,”sponsored by UNICEF, premiered at the news conference, documenting de-mining and mine awareness efforts in the African nation.

Before the film’s screening, Reth, a father of six, told the news conference de-mining is important but useless if the production and stockpiling of the landmines continue.”If we focus our attention on de-mining, we are diverting our attention from the fundamental goal of stopping landmines,”he said.

In the film, a Mozambican woman who lost both legs at age 12 recounts how when she lay in a field, wounded by the mine, soldiers had to remove several other landmines to get to her.”Afterwards, they replanted them,”she said.

MJP END LEBOWITZ