Tun Channareth

Tun Channareth is a landmine victim. He does not hesitate to admit that. However, he has moved beyond all of the statistics to become an extremely influential figure in the ICBL. He is a double amputee, yet he did not have any qualms about traveling to Oslo in December 1997 to accept the Nobel Prize on behalf of the ICBL. However, though he has certainly overcome very formidable obstacles, he was not able to overcome a language barrier in Oslo. The Nobel committee was not, in this instance, willing to help, and Channareth's acceptance speech was not delivered because the committee would not enable him to translate the speech from his native Khmer.

Channareth was born in Cambodia and was forced by the Khmer Rouge to leave Phnom Penh with his family in 1975. Much of his family was killed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, and Channareth himself was forced to flee because of the invasion of the Vietnamese in 1979. He joined the resistance army and it was while he served in the resistance that he was maimed by an anti-personnel landmine. At the time his wife was pregnant, and Channareth ended up losing both legs. After 11 years spent in refugee camps receiving vocational training, Channareth and his family were made to return to Cambodia (http://www.umr.org/HTban.htm).

Though Channareth now designs wheelchairs for Jesuit Services, his greatest impact has been as a speaker. He is living proof of the destruction that landmines can wreak upon the human body. Although he has great physical limitations, he does not live in the shadows of society as so many landmine victims must, curtailed by a low availability of prosthetics and movement aids. He has taken his story worldwide, making believers and skeptics alike more aware of the devastating effects that mines can have on a community.

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