2004 Halo-Trust Demining action in Nagorno-Karabakh

Another part of Simon Reeves' Holidays in the Danger zone, this time about de-mining in Nagorno-Karabakh. Impresive that some people in the place, despite the mine zone marks, just cross through the area.

UXO weapon depots in Georgia

Holidays in Danger Zone is a program conducted by Simon Reeve. In the episode about Georgia he encounters a couple of issues related to out topic, for example old Deponies of soon never again protected explosives or HaLo Trust demining in places, while the civilians just cross through withought really paying much atention to the signs. As a couple of members of this GE-action team, travelled to Georgia, it was said to us that HaLo Trust was not anymore active de-mining but training the Georgian troops for this to help in other lands.

miss landmine cambodia 2009

THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO
(in no particular order)

* Female pride and empowerment.

* Disabled pride and empowerment.

* Global and local landmine awareness and information.

* Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity-
historical, cultural, social, personal, African, European.

* Question established concepts of physical perfection.

* Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.

* Celebrate true beauty.

* Replace the passive term 'Victim' with the active term 'Survivor'

Photos von the Action

We are going to explain through images how was it developed. This was how we presented the action. In every table there was one person that would not be wounded and therefor would have to help their table mates. You have to explain all that before the people take there meal, so that they take the "mine" and see if they are wounded an how (they also become extra information about what is the incidence of Bounds in the different parts of the Body and then start the meal.

During the meal, when they see where were they wounded, they become a mark so everybody knows they cannot use this part of the Body. Everybody feels then unconfortability and they feel in need to ask for help.

It was then a reflexion pannel, where the people put where were they wounded and how did they feel. Then it was also an informative pannel with different issues arround the landmine thema, like maps or photos from "miss landmine" contest.

And also there was place to present some NGO related to the topic and collect some money about it:Landmine.de

We had also a critical constructive feed-back from one of the other GEA teams

The results are the following:

• Impact (How did you feel?, what will you do now?-Impact on you)
  

I felt like I've lost my leg, but I didn't understand why some people didn't have any handicap. Where is jutice?

Somehow I felt bad when we were laughting over this being handicaped, because it is a too serious and hard issue in reality

Somehow in this situation it was "funny", but in a very sarcastic way because of the knowledge that in other parts of the world still a reallity

I felt very well because I didn't have a handicap.

The first time I felt the difficulty to ask for help.

I pointed the table where all the people was already injured and I wasn't [was lucky! so I didn't have role (nobody asked me for help)

Although I was the lucky one, I still felt unconfortable to see others in confortless situation.

I felt mostly dependent, not really bad. I think I'll search in the internet and sign the petition you talked about.

• Message(Did the aim get across?, was their vision clear/fullfilled?)

I think the message effects of landmines as well as info on distribution and how they look came across.

It was difficult to follow the message because it was during the lunch time.

The action was clear and it was interesting to read the further informations

• Method (creativity? was it appropiate?)

It was good to do it at lunch-> a combination with such a hard topic with such an everyday thing made the reallity somehow more present

I liked my buddy on guide which helped me to cope with my missing leg

I liked it, it was proper prepared, they thought about everything

It was surprising. It could make the people experiencing.

I think the method was creative, great idea with the plastic lids symbolithing the mines

I did not like the filming/interviewing during the activity

The method was not so creative. I knew something similar before.

• Content (choice of topic?Gived Information?level/complexity?)
  

A lot of information on the pinned area. There was not enought time for reading it all.

Good prepared. I liked cause there was a lot of information.

Very good. Interesting topic. Not so much information during the activity, not overload but possibilities for further info

Good choice of the topic cause, even though I know about landmines, it was not present for me and I was not so aware about the dimensions. That's time!

How did we evaluated the action

Following some steps we were supposed to evaluate the action, our result was the following:

1. Management (well coordinated, some lack of information, time problem of the participannts)
   
2. Aim ("Rasing awareness of realities inliving with a handicap caused by a role play during the one-hour lunch time in June at KH to make seminar participants experience being handicaped and encourage them for further actions against the use of landmines)
   
3. Method (visual and participative, we are satisfied with the "work-out" results, communication between the team members can be improved, coordination can be also improved)
   
4. Content (appropiate topic, information blackboard was clearly structured, the depth of the topic was enough-concearning where the situation take place-)
   

Any comments on the landmine activities??

There was also place for self-reflection and thoughts, some of them were:

• it's sporty!
• great concept
• maybe should be more simulations like dayly situations
• still too many injured in 2009
• impresive numbers
• Interesting to feel what they feel, but a bit not to cool to laught and play about it. If we would had anybody without a leg there, nobody would jump arround with 1 leg. But great learning.
  

How did you feel while handicaped?

We also had a poster with different feelings that the people had to mark, the results where:
4 confused, 12 helpless, 5 angry, 8 lost patience, 8 amused, 7 annoyed, 12 dependent on the others, 6 sorry (for myself/others) and 4 touched. It is not clear for me at the moment of writting this tag if there was a limit on x that one could draw, but I supposed one could cross as much as they filled. There was also important space to add some feelings that someone thought were missing. Those feelings were: 4 passive, 5 vulnerable, 2 lucky and 1 frustrated.

Where was the people injured?

We were arround 64 people involved, but not all of them where injured. The ones who get no injure had to pay the price of helping the ones affected. There were 4 Eye injuries, 1 face, 4 hand injuries, 1 whole arm, 4 arms under the elbow, 13 whole legs and 8 down the knee. The injures where sometimes combined and should come with a proportional frequence of the real world injuries, depending on the official statistics. (here I'll put foto of the poster and real statitstics)

First meeting together in Kostelecke Horky

We had a meeting to decide what we finally needed for the action on Tuesday 9 of June. The action took place on Wednesday lunch. We show first the instruction papers, and draw some corresponding stikers for the injuries to be visible. There were also the information papers for the tables, with the instructions on how to act during the activity. We checked out the informative pannels and added a couple of definitions that were important. There was also place to develope a reflexive area about which injured the people had and its feelings.

We also had a cute but handicaped pig for collecting money to landmine.de organization.

Mines & coffe to go

Some hints about how to prepare a performance about landmines. I was wandering arround, thinking if we should do some cardboard boxes, simulating the landmines where we would put inside the injuries paper for our performance, when I thought of an old problem that really makes me angry in this "use it and throw it" society where we live. This is the bakers and "coffee to go" shops, where you always get your buns and muffins, without asking if you are just about to eat them, wrapped up in paperbags and your coffee in one go cans covered with plastic taps, again without asking if you are about to drink it. So I thought, they could just have this final use in our performance. We the doubble aim of make us aware how many of this rubish we see in the street and to be used as the mines itselfs. But remember, use just the already used covers, cause there is no need to waste more than they are already wasted. Besides, we want to be friendly with the enviroment.

And about how to do the action, you could put many of this covers on the floor, take one person with its eyes covered and let him wander arround till it treats one of the "mines". Then with a bomb sound that you can obtain pressing a key on your preprogrammed computer, and some split of water, you could let this people know what would be its injure for the rest of the performance. Maybe that can be done in some Improtheater performance, before the show starts.

GEA: 100 Landmines in Dublin, Ireland

In April 2007, -Will st. Leger from the woodster colective group, a group of artists with concern purposes on their performance, decided to distribute 100 fake landmines in Dubliner's places. Their aim was in their own words:

"The reason for doing this was to get people asking themselves "what if the world I walked in was littered with landmines?"

Anti-person landmine detection

When it comes to the end of war, who takes care of the rests? Since there is a massive use of landmines, almost since 50 years, there has been also a parallel developement on methods of how to detect them.

In most of the first detector cases, it was animals who keept the worst part of the job, such as dogs or rats, making it as usually a feeling of total careless for other living beeings in our planet's life. Governments make the problem and who cares about a rat more or less??

Other methods are trained mongoose animals atached to some robot, or metal detectors, but it stills in need of someone to bagger, with a huge potential harming risiko.
.
So there are some robots not just for detecting but also for exploding mines and some modified bacterias which can detect explosives,. One type of bacteria uses fotoluminescence and the other needs the TNT for its methabolic porpuses. Nevertheless this methods are really expensive and no method ist without failure and we surely hat to thing twice about modifying a bacteria species and letting it free in the enviroment, because of the evolutive process.

The Begining

Inside the first seminar for GLEN participants we were divided into different groups. Each group should think about a global education action (GEA) to be done inside the next seminar, which will take place in the week of 8 of June at Kostalecke Horky (Czesch rep.). In my group we decided to become more aware of the consecuences of a landmine injury. Therefor we will prepare a global action in one meal's time, where all the participants will become some mine above their plates. Exploding, they will discover how they will have to expend the rest of the meal time. Maybe they will just have one arm to eat, or they will need some people's help to go inside the dinning room, cause they would just be able to use one leg. There will be an informational pannel, and some posters for going deep inside the topic. Besides we decided to create this Blog, so that the action is not just keeped for us, but others can also follow it.

The main photo is from the film, "Tutles can fly" (Lakposhtha hâm parvaz mikonand)

YEAR	2004
LENGTH	95 min.
COUNTRY	Irak
DIRECTOR	Bahman Ghobadi
SCRIPT	Bahman Ghobadi
MUSIC	Housein Alizadeh
PHOTOGRAPHY	Shahriar Assadi
ACTORS	Avaz Latif, Soran Ebrahim, Hirsh Feyssal, Saddam Hossein Feysal, Abdol Rahman Karim

PLOT In a refugee camp from Kurdistan, near the fronteer with Turkey. The people want to install a Sky, so that they get informed about the inminent attack from USA ober Irak. There the children dedicate their lifes to demine zone and re-sell this explosives. There is the main story of a family of children that came to this camp, after loosing their parents in war and suffering the soldiers atrocities.