As the sun rises between the trees, Akira, president of the Cambodian Self Help Demining (CSHD) team, begins his morning by setting a stick of TNT next to a land mine. The mine lies within a 4-hectare minefield his team is clearing in Anlong Veng. As the rest of the team stop work to take cover, Akira, wiping sweat from under his thick protective clothing, helmet and face shield, counts down. A boom rings out, the ground shakes and debris flies into the air as the land mine is destroyed.

“Before, it would only take me a minute to defuse and remove a mine,” Akira says, referring to his former gung-ho method of clearing mines with nothing but a stick and a knife. “I would collect the detonators in my pocket and make a fire at the end of the day to burn explosives from the mines I collected…. When I cleared the old way, I could wear a sarong and sandals. But now we must follow NGO procedures.”

For more than 10 years, Akira was famous throughout Cambodia for his controversial demining methods. Although opposed by government authorities and other demining groups for not following international safety standards, Akira, a former child soldier with the Khmer Rouge, became a local hero, clearing the countryside of more than 50,000 mines, many of which he had once laid.

Earlier this year, with the help of supporters both here and abroad, Akira gained the equipment and training needed to meet international standards and obtained a licence for him and his team to demine, creating the first Cambodian-run demining organisation. “Now we have much support, so there is no more trouble,” Akira said, after relating stories of being arrested for his work and the land mine museum he opened in Siem Reap in 1997 being closed down periodically and its contents confiscated.

“At that time, I liked to demine alone in the jungle or with my wife. I didn’t have the equipment to start an NGO, but I knew how to lay and I knew how to defuse. All kinds of land mines and bombs I know how to make safe, and I have cleared many, many thousands until now.”

BACTAC country director Peter Ferguson, who helped Akira prepare for demining accreditation, said many changes were required. “The way he used to work was to go into the field, find mines, render them safe and remove them, often bringing them back for display at the museum,” he said. “In humanitarian demining, you can’t operate that way. Particularly with land mines, they cannot be moved. You locate them and destroy them in place.”

But after the necessary equipment was donated and training completed, field reports on Akira’s methods were excellent, Ferguson said. Along with his new accreditation has come respect from those who once opposed him. Two years ago, the Cambodian Mine Action Authority (CMAA) certified the contents of Akira’s land mine museum in Siem Reap safe - the first time in the world such a museum has been opened to the public.

With their workday over and dusk approaching, the CSHD team settles into hammocks around a campfire, boiling their jungle soup of wild fruit and animal innards. Akira tells how he lost his entire family in the late ’70s - all but one aunt, a Khmer Rouge solider, who took him in. Unsure of his birth date, Akira estimates he was between 10 and 13 when he became a soldier for the Khmer Rouge, learning about warfare and weaponry. Later, joining the Vietnamese army, Akira says his job was to control the K5 mine belt that stretched along the Thai border, planting new mines and training others to do the same. After the war Akira became passionate about seeing his country free from war and the remnants of war, particularly the land mines he had helped lay.

To visit the Cambodia Land Mine Museum whilst in Siem Reap contact: info@asia-adventures.com

Edited from Phnom Penh Post (May 09)