27/12/2023 Laos
“If you ever come across anything suspicious like this item, please do not pick it up, contact your local law and/or enforcement agency for assistance”.
A horrific image haunts me: my father amputating a little girl’s leg to stop her from bleeding to death. The girl attended the same village school as my siblings and me. She was about my age, around 5. As blood flowed from her tiny body, my father’s snow-white lab coat turned bright crimson. The girl’s cries and her mother’s painful screams terrified me. I stood frozen, unable to turn away until my mother swept me to the safety of our home. My father worked on countless victims of unexploded ordnance, or UXO—bombs that failed to detonate when they hit the ground—throughout Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in the 1970s and ’80s. My mother altered clothes for people who lost their limbs. My parents’ work resonates with my own efforts leading Legacies of War, an advocacy and educational organization addressing the long unfinished legacies of war in Laos.
Photo-Source: zocalopublicsquare.org
Biography of a Bomb
Dear editors, Biography of a bomb is aimed at highlighting the danger caused by unexploded bombs. Moreover, the most important aspect is that we work completely non profit, what drives us is raising awerness about this topic. We make use of your pictures and articles, but we need them to put a context in how findings are done. We trust in your understanding. We will (and we always do) cite the source and the author. We thank you for your comprehension.
