我孫子市国際交流協会

Date: Saturday August 8th, 2009 2:00p.m. to 4:00p.m.
Speaker: Mr. Masamitsu Shimegi
Listener: 38 people

Mr. Shimegi's profile: Consultant of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
He has been serving for several years at the U.N. Mine Action Center for Afghanistan (UNMACA)
For better understanding, it is recommended for readers to refer to his article in the 48th AIRA newsletter issued in July 2008 on landmine disposal activities.
Mr. Shimegi lectured on the activities of detecting and unearthing landmines being conducted in Afghanistan and Angola. Using pictures on the screen, he detailed about the kind and usage of mines, caucious task and disposal of excavated mines.
After the general speech, question and answer time was set to draw more attention of the visitors to the current situation in these nations.
Followings are summury of his comments and answers to the questions from the floor.

1. Landmines: There are two kinds of mines, the one for tanks and the other for people.
At the battlefield, dead soldiers can be left behind, however, wounded soldiers should not be abondoned. Carrying a hurt soldier on a stretcher requires four persons, which means at least five soldiers are forced to leave the battle front.
A landmine is ingeniously made to hurt a person but never kill him at all. When a leg is hurt by stepping on a landmine, it must be mutilated within six hours to avoid a progressive desease tetanus to death.
A man-killing mine is said to be a most useful cheap weapon, costing only one dollar !
Buried mine disposal is a most painstaking work.
Mine-detector is so sensitive in reaching deposits such as cans, irons or other metals in the ground, that it can only thankfully encounter a landmine once in every 1000 times.
The mine search activity is regularly done on Monday through Friday, and every Saturday is left for machine's maintenance, and Sunday and holidays are used for resting.
The wage for a mine searcher is 200 dollars a month.
His duty is to minimize danger of unexpected explosion by means of promoting mechanization of tools, Mr. Shimegi explained.
Majority of mines could be detected and unearthed by machines, however, the last few percent should be done by manual handling.
Nowadays approximately one hundred million of landmines are still in the ground worldwide. Setting a mine is easy but removing it is tremendously difficult.
A mine-detecting dog is sometimes used at mine-field, who is especially trained so that it
can nose gunpowder in the ground.
The Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines (Ottawa Treaty) agreed in 1997 and came into effect in 1998 has been ratified by 155 nations, except U.S.A, Russia, China, Egypt and some others.
Although Egypt is the heaviest mined country in the world, their exact data is not clarified in the official record, since they are one of non-affiliated members.
Mr. Shimegi also referred to daily topics in general apart from mine-removal activities in Afghanistan and Angola as follows.

2. Afghanistan
Afghan married women always wear an overall cloth called Boorkha. They strictly adhere to the racial customs not to expose their skins to others by covering their whole body by a Boorkha.
However, it certainly has another merit of protecting themselves from severe sand storm.
The word Taliban is often misunderstood.
Nowadays, Taliban is misused to call Afghan Islamic Fundamentalists' armed groups, however, originally it meant Islamic theology students.
The schools generally bear not only tuition fees but living costs as well, which is great favor for poor families.
Among them, some schools are reportedly giving brain-washing education for future fighters.

3. Angola
In 1974 this African country achieved independence from Portugal. Official language is Portuguese.
The abundance of oil and diamond in this country has been the cause of dispute among other nations. Sarcastically, this country is rich in natural resources, while the people rarely have a chance for education.
The custom of garbage disposal has not rooted among the people, so garbages are littered everywhere in the town.
"Angola" reminds easily of Angora rabbit, but not a single rabbit is found in this country.
The area including Ankara, Turkey was used to be called Angora, and naturally Angora rabbit is one of the Turkish products.
Formerly, elepahnts had been killed enormously for their tusks, resulting in distinctive situation in numbers.
Then the Washington Convention (*) ruled the complete prohibition against elephants capture.
By virtue of the protective measures by the agreement, exploded numbers of elephants assaulted humans and houses so often that an infanticide has become allowed to be introduced.
Finally Mr. Shimegi mentioned about Chinese aggressive business activities in this area, who are constructing railroads and roads in Angola throwing enormous number of workers and machinery and materials. They receive the return in the form of crude oil, reaching several hundred million yen. The two capital cities, Beijin and Luanda are connected by direct air services.
At the end of the lecture, Mr. Shimegi thanked for audience's eager listening to his speech.
(*) "Convention on International Trade in Endangered Spieces of Wild Fauna and Flora" (CITES) agreed in 1973 and came into effect in 1975 with 172 member nations as of March, 2008.

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