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Al-Ahed Telegram

Wounded de-miner rejoins colleagues as PR worker

Wounded de-miner rejoins colleagues as PR worker
folder_openSelected Articles access_time14 years ago
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Source: Daily Star, 1-7-2009
By Mohammed Zaatari

NABATIEH: While waiting for his prosthetic leg to be delivered, cluster-bomb victim Ali Murad has rejoined his colleagues at the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), where he once served as a deminer. Now Murad, 26, is part of MAG's public relations team at the group's headquarters in the Kfar Jawz neighborhood of the southern town of Nabatieh.

Murad's right leg was amputated after he was wounded in a demining mission in the southern village of Arabsalim.

An estimated four million cluster bombs were dropped by "Israeli" warplanes in the final 72 hours of the summer 2006 war with Lebanon, with an estimated 12 million square meters of Lebanese soil still contaminated. A total of 340 people, including 34 children have been killed or wounded by these de facto landmines since the war's end.

Last week, Ali and other cluster bomb victims who were wounded while carrying out demining missions attended a meeting at the MAG headquarters to discuss "better and faster medical compensation."

The meeting was attended by MAG program director Christina Louise Bennike and representatives from the SEGA insurance company, which covers the medical expenses of deminers wounded by cluster bombs. Talks centered on the possibility of upgrading healthcare services and expediting the payment of compensation for victims.

Murad told The Daily Star that money an other forms of assistance "can never replace what ha been lost."
"Going back to work, even if it's more administrative and paper-work oriented lifts up your spirits," he added.

Many other deminers who were wounded in the field remain unemployed.
Bennike stressed that all MAG employees are fully insured, adding that the value of compensation has been set by SEGA and the National Demining Office of Lebanon.
She said the main difficulty facing MAG was the lack of proper funding.

"We are constantly looking for sources of funding in order to continue our work and make Lebanon a safe, and mine-free country," she said.
The 1997 Nobel Peace Prize co-laureate, MAG started work in Lebanon in 2000, following "Israel's" withdrawal from most of south Lebanon, and has since cleared more than 9.8 million square meters of land.

"The MAG program owes these achievements to 360 nationally recruited employees who risk their lives dismantling cluster bombs able to disperse hundreds of bomblets," according the MAG's mission statement posted on their website.

"We stand by the victims' side and try to provide them with the proper care here or abroad" said Bennike.
Echoing Ali, Bennike added that nothing can compensate the deminers' losses.
"However," she added, "reintegrating them in the program to work alongside their colleagues can speed up their recovery and help them overcome their suffering."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said that a Berlin conference on cluster bombs last week gave a "clear signal" to implement a ban on the weapons as soon as possible. The two-day talks ended on Friday.

"The Oslo Convention [on Cluster Munitions] must be implemented as quickly as possible and take effect as soon as possible," Steinmeier told German news Agency Dutch Press Agentur, adding, "I am confident that we will achieve that."

Germany said it was about to join the 10 countries that had already ratified the treaty.
Germany also announced plans to destroy 440,000 cluster bombs in its stockpiles and containing over 50 million submunitions, by the year 2015.

Once active, the convention will prohibit the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs. The document, drawn up in Oslo last December, is undergoing ratification by 98 signatory states.

The Berlin conference, organized by the German Foreign Office, focused on ways of destroying military stockpiles of the weapon.

In addition to Germany, several other states including Japan, Slovenia and Croatia, are expected to ratify the treaty in the coming months.