|  Around the world, landmines
claim 26,000 new victims a year - that's
71 people every day. Already over a quarter
of a million people have fallen victim to
the more than 100 million landmines in 64
countries, a number that continues to grow.
These landmines are installed during wartime,
but usually attack their victims years later,
after the conflict they were set for is long
over.
Nowhere is this truer than in Cambodia,
where 35 percent more land could be cultivated
if it weren?t polluted with landmines. Victims
from landmines often die and leave behind
their dependents. Those who survive are disabled,
a condition that guarantees a lifetime of
ostracism and extreme impoverishment in a
country where half the population already
lives below the poverty level. Most amputees
end up becoming beggars, but 227 of them,
along with their families, have rejected
this path and banded together in the village
of Veal Thom to improve their lives as a
group in ways that they could not have done
on their own. They have set about building
a school and running cooperative farms.
Two
men are at the center of this vision: a former
Khmer Rouge commander, and a Cambodian refugee
who fled a Khmer Rouge torture camp and ended
up in the US, who is now returning to Cambodia
to help it rebuild.Thirty years ago these
men would have been deadly enemies. Today
they work together to make the dream that
is Veal Thom. |
