IRIN Focus on Angola’s continued use of land mines

Angola has been criticised for its continued use of land mines, despite a commitment by the government to ratify the International Mine Ban Treaty. This week Alex Vines, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch (HRW), said in Geneva after attending an international land mine conference: “If they ratify the treaty they raise the stakes enormously. I don’t think they fully realise what they are doing.” Angola signed the 1997 Ottawa convention banning landmines and on 25 July this year the Angolan parliament approved ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty, with 147 votes in favour, one against and one abstention. In its Landmine Monitor Report 2000, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) which is made up various international organisations, including HRW and Norwegian People’s AID (NPA) one of the largest humanitarian de-mining groups in Angola, said that both Angolan government troops and the UNITA rebel movement had continued to use anti-personnel mines. “A re-survey of 11 provinces by NPA and Halo Trust in 1999 indicated that both the government and UNITA have laid new mines. UNITA has tended to mine primary, secondary and tertiary roads to impede transportation. The government has been using mines for defensive purposes around strategic locations,” the report said. Government use In its report the ICBL quoted two government soldiers as admitting that that in June this year they had laid new mines to ambush UNITA patrols in the eastern Moxico province along the Zambian border. It said that NPA had also reported that government engineers had in April admitted to laying new mines. The report quoted a March report by the Angolan demining agency, INAROEE, as saying: “There is no doubt that limited new mines have been planted in Angola within the last six months. These mines are primarily planted as reinforcements in already mined areas around military installations and other strategic locations, such as hydro-electric power plants or access to provincial capitals.” According to the ICBL there were also “worrying” reports that Angolans trained in humanitarian de-mining had been employed to plant new mines. Government response Joao Filipe Martins, Angola’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva told the international land mine conference: “Certain mines possessed by the Angolan army are well placed and do not present a danger to the population, nor a difficulty to be found for their destruction.” In December last year in an address to the Angolan National Assembly the speaker of the house, Roberto de Almeida said: “It is war. We have the right to defend ourselves. Landmines are part of that right. Once Savimbi is defeated we will stop using land mines,” he said referring to UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. UNITA use The report said that the UNITA had also continued to use land mines in its operations across Angola. “UNITA has also used land mines to control and effectively imprison populations under its control by planting mines around villages,” the report noted. According to the ICBL, UNITA had also laid a number of mines during its military operations in northern Namibia in response to the Namibian government’s decision late last year to allow Angolan troops to use Namibian territory as base for launching attacks on UNITA positions in southern Angola. It added that UNITA had increased its use of anti-tank mines. In one example, it said that on 24 April this year 28 people were killed on the Puri-Negage road, in the northern Uige province, when the vehicle in which they were travelling detonated an anti-tank mine. Demiming activities The report said that despite the ongoing conflict, as of May this year an estimated 10 sq km and 5,000 km of road have been cleared and about 15,000 mines destroyed. It said that mine action funding in 2000 would total US $17,4 million. It added that about 25 percent of the minefields previously cleared in Huambo and Kuito in the central highlands had shown signs of fresh mine laying.