All of us aged 8~12 sang songs in the school during our music class. For example the theme of the songs I sang during that time was mostly about either our great and prosperous Soviet Union, the mother, the flowers and birds, never, however, did we sing a song, which basically tought you that the bombs can kill you and everyone you love and the moment you see a piece of metal in the ground you have to run away and call the special project team. The kids in Laos, however do sing exactly this same with almost exact lyrics to my memory. We've just saw two documentaries on UXO, which is for the likes of me, the blissfull ignorants, stands for "Unexploded Ordnance". The documentaries were named "The bomb harvest", which had a funny looking (he himself referred to the way he looks in the DVD as "the-arse-of-a-dog" one time and something similarly ridiculous the other time ^^) and funny speaking Australian guy, who was in the gulf war when he was younger and now is helping Laos to get rid of the bombs that the US illegally dropped in Laos against the Geneva convention it signed the same year. The second documentary was called "Bombies"; this one seemed to be a little better produced with the narrative and commentaries and was more informative, we felt. (By the way we're getting a bootleg copy of it in about half an hour for $10).
It was a bit shocking and eye-opening to see these documentaries and learn about something we didn't know and many people still don't. During the Vietnam war the US signed a Geneva convention in 1962, which proclaimed the territory of Laos to be a neutral ground and hence all military activities were prohibited in Laos. The only two parties that violated that convention were the North-Vietnamese and the US military. Well, the Norht-Vietnamese weren't the signatories to the UN and neither had signed or could sign any of such treaties, but the US is a different story. The US started to bomb Laos the same year it signed the convention and it was kept secret from the American public and the congress. For 9 years they kept bombing Laos with the "Cluster Bombs", which is basically one huge bomb, which contains hundreds if not thousands of little ones, which are getting scatterred in the air to achieve the maximum of human casualties. It is amazing that so many people know about the Vietnam bombings and Cambodian landmines, yet very few are familiar or even ever heard of Laos bombing, even though Laos is the heaviest bombed country per capita in the world, and not only that, the US unloaded more bombs here than it did in Germany or Japan during the WW2. Another shocking thing about this is that after the unsuccessful air attack missions in Vietnam from their base in Thailand, the US military crafts would divert to Laos and unloaded all their artillery because it was, (put plainly), a hassle to go through the safety checks before landing on the US air base with all those bombs still attached to the aircraft.
Even now, after almost 30 years since the war ended mostly poor people in remote villages and kids are getting killed and/or disabled by these bombies the size of a mandarine scatterred around. We've just came to Phonsavan from the province that was heavily bombed during that time, the cities of Samneua and ViengXai. And they still find some even big carrier bombs that unexploded because of some reasons. The main organization that is involved in neutralizing the UXO is called MAG (Mines Advisory Group) and it is being sponsored by many countries governmental aid organizations as well as the UN. It said in the video that though the US several times approached Laos government with the offer of help, the Laos government declined it due to suspisions they may have (and very rightly so), regardless of whether those suspisions are reasonable or not. But we still saw two US sponsors on the list US State department and something else I cannot recall now.
Anyhow, if those of you will be coming to Uzbekistan in September you can see this excellent documentary by yourself, otherwise try to look it up in the Net or at the DVD stores. If you're interested in this kind of stuf, it's a good value.
Now again due to slow internet I've only apploaded some photos for rather previous posts. Here you can see our truck that took us to the start point during trekking in Luang Prabang, and the guy with an AK47. 
Buddist monk relaxes on his leisure time.
Kids in Khmu village where we stayed the first night. I hope they still remember "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" song that Katy taught them.
And the last picture for today would be our modest lunch during the descent from a very high mountain, which lasted for almost 3 hours.
No comments:
Post a Comment