(New York) -- India and Pakistan should halt the use of antipersonnel landmines along their common border, Human Rights Watch urged today. It also cautioned that the latest tensions could lead to additional mine-laying.
In a new backgrounder released today, Human Rights Watch said that as part of the military buildup resulting from the December 13, 2001, attack on the Indian parliament, both India and Pakistan have emplaced large numbers of antipersonnel and antivehicle mines along their common border in one of the largest scale mine laying operations anywhere in the world since 1997, when the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty was opened for signature.
"Neither India nor Pakistan are among the 143 members of this landmark treaty which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of antipersonnel mines," said Stephen D. Goose, acting executive director of the Arms division of Human Rights Watch. "That is not, however, an excuse for abusing the rapidly emerging international norm against any antipersonnel mine use."
Human Rights Watch said the mine-laying is a violation of customary international humanitarian law, because antipersonnel mines are inherently indiscriminate and because their limited military utility is far outweighed by their negative humanitarian consequences.
India openly acknowledges that it is laying mines on its own territory in a possible attempt to mine its entire 1,800-mile (2,897-kilometer) border with Pakistan, at times creating minefields three miles wide (4.8 kilometers). Mines have been emplaced in agricultural areas right after crops were planted and civilians were forced to evacuate the areas.
Pakistan has mined its side of the border, in what the government has described as an obligation "to take precautionary measures."
Numerous reports of civilian casualties on both sides of the border call into question the effectiveness of the measures taken to protect the civilians of India and Pakistan from the effects of mines. Mines have also killed or injured a large number of Indian Army and border security troops as they planted the mines.
