Six soldiers were killed and 8 soldiers were wounded in the explosion of a land mine as a military vehicle was passing by in Çukurca District of Hakkâri Province on 27 May 2009. We feel great sorrow and concern due to this incident that a land mine caused. We condemn the ones who caused killings with land mines.
We share the pain of the families of the soldiers who were killed in the incident.
We iterate the fact we mentioned several times before in recent years: Violence and armed methods cannot be a part of the solution.
It is the time to take measurements for the solution Kurdish problem with democratic and peaceful ways and to leave violence, clashes, operations and discriminative politics behind.
Human Rights Association (IHD) conducted an extensive project between 2006 and 2007 on land mines to drop the casualty risk that was caused by land mines and explosives and to build up the way for the survivors of the explosions to get medical and judicial help. All the documents and maps of land mine can be accessible from our website. The outputs also distributed to the deputies.
We are observing the discussions in Grand National Assembly of Turkey on the cleaning of land mines in the Syria border with great concern.
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Many land mines and explosives had been placed underground in Van, Hakkari, Tunceli, Diyarbakır, Batman, Bingöl, Ağrı, Şırnak and Mardin Provinces. There is not any serious attempt to clean these mines according to the Ottowa Convention.
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According the data of IHD;
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Number of people who were killed or wounded due to the explosion of mine between 2002-2008 |
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Year |
Killed |
Wounded |
|
2002 |
35 |
72 |
|
2003 |
20 |
50 |
|
2004 |
59 |
139 |
|
2005 |
70 |
161 |
|
2006 |
40 |
138 |
|
2007 |
14 |
69 |
|
2008 |
28 |
55 |
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Total |
266 |
684 |
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Note: 2 soldiers who were killed and 104 soldiers who were wounded in 2007 and 43 soldiers who were killed and 95 soldiers who were wounded in 2008 not included in this table. |
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3- There is a serious attempt for the rehabilitation and treatment of mine survivors.
Hereby we make a call for the cleaning of the all landmines in Turkey. The maps of landmines should be open to public. We demand the declaration of mined regions whoever laid them.
We wish a Turkey and a World without landmines.