Cambodian national Tun Channareth, a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, speaks to students during a visit to Seattle University, June 2, 2011. I had the opportunity to photograph and listen to a few stories from Channareth for a piece in the Mercer Island Reporter as he traveled to the States to receive on honorary graduate degree from Seattle U. Channareth was honored with a Nobel Prize for his advocacy of banning landmines with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the weapon that cost him his legs in 1982.
By JACK BROOM
The Seattle Times
First Posted: June 07, 2011
See more pictures here.
SEATTLE — One of his legs ends at the knee. The other, just below it.
It's a disquieting sight, but Tun Channareth, of Cambodia, sitting in a wheelchair he made himself, would not want you to turn away.
"Some people understand my English," he told a group of Seattle University students a few days ago. "Some people understand my body."
Channareth's speech, his body and his passion convey a simple message: that land mines, many of which were placed in wars and conflicts decades ago, continue to kill and maim thousands of men, women and children around the globe each year.
"The suffering never stops," said Channareth, who said one of every 230 people in his country is an amputee, the bulk of their injuries caused by land mines left over from decades of civil war and incursions by foreign military.
Even today, he said, it's estimated that as many as 5 million land mines and other undetonated explosives remain in Cambodia alone — a country slightly smaller than the state of Washington — many still capable of killing a child at play, or a worker in a farm or field. And even if a field is cleared of mines once, the danger can return as plastic-encased explosive devices move around in annual floods.
Channareth's devotion to that message is the reason he was selected to travel to Norway to accept a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
It has led to visits with world leaders on several continents, including the prime minister of Japan, royalty in Spain, Cambodia and Belgium, the late Pope John Paul II, and a telephone conversation with former President Clinton.
And it's why he'll be speaking Sunday at Seattle University's graduate commencement ceremony, where he will receive an honorary doctoral degree from the university.
All this attention would have been the farthest thing from his mind on that December day in 1982, when, as a 22-year-old resistance soldier — and a husband whose wife was pregnant with their first child — he stepped on a mine near the border between Cambodia and Thailand.
After the blast, when he saw the mangled remains of his legs, his only emotion was despair. "I just wanted to die. (I thought) 'What can I do now? How can I support my family?' "
If another soldier hadn't stopped him, Channareth said, he would have shot himself with his own weapon.
Over the next 13 years in a Thai refugee camp, Channareth received vocational training and came to see that burgeoning numbers of people shared his fate. Returning to Cambodia, he got a job with the Jesuit Refugee Service in the city of Siem Reap, assembling and later designing wheelchairs, many of which go to land-mine victims.
Channareth's connection with Seattle University dates to the summer of 2007, when Le Xuan Hy, an associate professor of psychology, went to the Siem Reap area to see its best-known attraction, the Angkor Wat Temple, and to visit the Jesuit center.
"The first thing I noticed about him was how nimble he was, even with the loss of his legs," Hy said. "He was on fire about the help he needed to give to the people."
Hy said Channareth was a striking blend of two identities: a hard worker in a simple manufacturing shop, and a knowledgeable conversationalist about world events — particularly as they relate to the growing call for international bans on both land mines and cluster bombs.
After returning to Seattle, Hy told Channareth's story to two of his fellow SU faculty members, Quan Le, an associate professor of business and economics, and Peter Raven, director of international business programs.
Last September, Le and Raven led a group of 18 undergraduate students and MBA candidates on a "service-learning" trip to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. In Cambodia, they planted 70 trees, met Channareth and assembled a dozen wheelchairs.
Justin Hatley, 30, of Seattle, who made the trip in the last stages of earning his MBA, said the experience was eye-opening. Like many Americans, Hatley tended to think of the Vietnam War and Cambodia's bloody Pol Pot regime as closed chapters of history.
He knew land mines had been used in the region, "but I didn't know they were still around and that kids and adults are still walking into them."
Le and Raven also nominated Channareth for the honorary doctorate. SU President Stephen Sundborg, announcing the selection, said Channareth "has reached out with compassion in service to other land-mine victims while working tirelessly to rid the world of these insidious weapons."
Channareth said he appreciates the honor, but that its real value will be in the attention he hopes it might bring to his cause.
That work is far from finished, he said. Although 156 nations have signed the Mine Ban Treaty, nearly 40 have not, including the U.S., Russia and China.
Some of the SU students who traveled to Cambodia have since worked on a petition campaign calling on President Obama to join the anti-land-mine effort. Although the U.S. has financially supported land-mine-removal efforts, a State Department spokesman said in 2009 that if it agreed to the ban, the U.S. might not be able to meet its national defense needs and protect its allies.
The zeal Channareth feels for his crusade has replaced the despair that lingered long after his injury. He and his wife now have six children, one in high school, one in college and four who are college graduates.
At speaking engagements, he often tells his listeners to "grow the flower of peace in your heart." A peaceful heart, he says, creates a peaceful person, which in turn would produce a peaceful family, community, county and world.
------------------------------
Cambodian activist to visit Mercer Island | The might of many
By MARY L. GRADY
Mercer Island Reporter Editor
Today, 7th June 2011
The man in the handcrafted wheelchair does not have legs to speak of. They were blown off when he stepped on a land mine in 1982 when he was a young soldier on patrol searching for signs of the Khmer Rouge.
But he is not visiting Seattle University or Mercer Island Presbyterian Church to talk of himself, or his long painful journey from that day. No. He is here to talk about Cambodia and how the stifling presence of perhaps millions of land mines, most set more than 30 years ago, still haunt his country and hold it back.
Channareth is in Seattle to accept a honorary doctorate degree this weekend from Seattle University for his 14 years as a volunteer at the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). ICBL won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Channareth was chosen to accept the award in Oslo on behalf of the organization along with the ICBL founder, Jody Williams.
The Cambodian man, 50, has a grade school education. He is thrilled by the honorary degree, he said, but wants the attention to be focused on the on-going effort by the ICBL to collect more signatures by individuals world wide to pressure world leaders including President Obama, who have yet to sign the treaty to do so.
“When you see the new buildings and big construction in the cities of my country, do not be confused,” he told students on campus last Friday. “To know what real life is in my country, go to Cambodia outside cities to see the real life of now,” he told them. “There you will see poor, poor people, people living day to day. Look at them to find out, he continued, or look at me,” he said, pointing to his legs.
The Cambodian’s long journey to Seattle started in 2007, when he met professor Le Xuan Hy of Seattle University who is an Island resident. Hy, a native of Vietnam, who held the Pigott-McCone endowed chair at that time, has championed the Cambodian and his mission.
He met Channareth in the workshop where he works when he is not campaigning or gathering signatures for the ICBL.
There he saw a man who was able to straddle both worlds — that of his simple beginnings and the complexities of bringing global pressure to bear on the practice of war that involved land mines, he said.
Hy came back to Seattle University to tell Channareth’s story. As a part of its commitment to promoting and championing of social justice, the university later sent students to see the Jesuit Refugee Center where Channareth worked in Siem Reap on a service learning trip.
Channareth has spoken to kings, presidents and prime ministers all over the world for ICBL. The organization has gotten more than 150 countries to sign the agreement to ban land mines; and to end manufacture and ensure their disposal. But there is so much more to do.
Neither the United States nor China have yet to sign the treaty.
His mission here is to obtain signatures of as many people as possible to demonstrate the depth of opposition to land mines to convince world leaders to sign the land mine treaty. He asks each and everyone he meets to show support.
“Mr. Channareth has reached out with compassion in service to other land mine victims, while working tirelessly to rid the world of these insidious weapons,” said Seattle University President Stephen Sundborg, S.J.
“He is an inspiring example to our students of our mission as a university that empowers leaders for a just and humane world.”
Channareth greets each visitor with a humble greeting, pressing his palms together with a bow of his head. His gaze is serene but unblinking. What remains of his wrecked legs are uncovered. He does not have prosthetics. He is speaks quietly yet is animated. Despite his many years in a wheelchair, his spine is straight, his body lean.
His English is remarkably good, despite learning the language by standing outside an open classroom window to listen to a teacher.
Channareth did not have a baht (a few cents) to pay to attend class each day. A friend who did would open the window for him to hear.
Channareth’s personal story mirrors the story of thousands if not millions of Cambodian people whose lives coincided with the Vietnam conflict and the civil wars in Cambodia that followed.
He was perhaps 20 years old when his parents were murdered by the Pol Pot regime. His father burned to death. His mother, Chinese, simply disappeared. His remaining family struggled.
Feeling there was not other choice, he left his home and walked for a week to find work at what turned out to be refugee camps at the Thai-Cambodia border. He found that there was no aid for men, only women. Men could only join the military to live, he explained. They would be fed but not paid.
After his injury, Channareth received training in both engine repair, typing and welding. After years in the camps, he and the family he had begun there, left to return to Cambodia and what he hoped was a brighter future.
They made their way to capitol city of Phnom Phen where there was no work for a disabled man, only begging.
He was devastated. “How will I be responsible for my family,” he said.
Instead of rebuilding their country after the Vietnam war, opposing regimes fought with each other. The result was the slaughter and suffering imposed on millions. Left behind are an equal number of hidden explosives everywhere, he said.
After the fighting stopped, people left the rural areas and went to the city, he explained. The rural lands were all but abandoned because of the land mines. The cities were full of their victims.
After many months in Phnom Phen, Channareth found work through the Jesuit Refugee Mission. There he applied the training he had obtained in the camps to building wheelchairs. A religious sister at the camp noticed his English and he found himself interpreting for the visitors that came to the mission. That lead to his work with the ICBL.
At one point he personally delivered a paper bundle of 400,000 signatures neatly balanced on his wheelchair to government officials.
“‘They said thank you, we will keep them for you,’” he remembered with a smile. “I took them back with me.”
To learn more and to sign the electronic petition visit the Seattle University commencement ceremony at www.seattleu.edu/commencement.
See more pictures here.
SEATTLE — One of his legs ends at the knee. The other, just below it.
It's a disquieting sight, but Tun Channareth, of Cambodia, sitting in a wheelchair he made himself, would not want you to turn away.
"Some people understand my English," he told a group of Seattle University students a few days ago. "Some people understand my body."
Channareth's speech, his body and his passion convey a simple message: that land mines, many of which were placed in wars and conflicts decades ago, continue to kill and maim thousands of men, women and children around the globe each year.
"The suffering never stops," said Channareth, who said one of every 230 people in his country is an amputee, the bulk of their injuries caused by land mines left over from decades of civil war and incursions by foreign military.
Even today, he said, it's estimated that as many as 5 million land mines and other undetonated explosives remain in Cambodia alone — a country slightly smaller than the state of Washington — many still capable of killing a child at play, or a worker in a farm or field. And even if a field is cleared of mines once, the danger can return as plastic-encased explosive devices move around in annual floods.
Channareth's devotion to that message is the reason he was selected to travel to Norway to accept a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
It has led to visits with world leaders on several continents, including the prime minister of Japan, royalty in Spain, Cambodia and Belgium, the late Pope John Paul II, and a telephone conversation with former President Clinton.
And it's why he'll be speaking Sunday at Seattle University's graduate commencement ceremony, where he will receive an honorary doctoral degree from the university.
All this attention would have been the farthest thing from his mind on that December day in 1982, when, as a 22-year-old resistance soldier — and a husband whose wife was pregnant with their first child — he stepped on a mine near the border between Cambodia and Thailand.
After the blast, when he saw the mangled remains of his legs, his only emotion was despair. "I just wanted to die. (I thought) 'What can I do now? How can I support my family?' "
If another soldier hadn't stopped him, Channareth said, he would have shot himself with his own weapon.
Over the next 13 years in a Thai refugee camp, Channareth received vocational training and came to see that burgeoning numbers of people shared his fate. Returning to Cambodia, he got a job with the Jesuit Refugee Service in the city of Siem Reap, assembling and later designing wheelchairs, many of which go to land-mine victims.
Channareth's connection with Seattle University dates to the summer of 2007, when Le Xuan Hy, an associate professor of psychology, went to the Siem Reap area to see its best-known attraction, the Angkor Wat Temple, and to visit the Jesuit center.
"The first thing I noticed about him was how nimble he was, even with the loss of his legs," Hy said. "He was on fire about the help he needed to give to the people."
Hy said Channareth was a striking blend of two identities: a hard worker in a simple manufacturing shop, and a knowledgeable conversationalist about world events — particularly as they relate to the growing call for international bans on both land mines and cluster bombs.
After returning to Seattle, Hy told Channareth's story to two of his fellow SU faculty members, Quan Le, an associate professor of business and economics, and Peter Raven, director of international business programs.
Last September, Le and Raven led a group of 18 undergraduate students and MBA candidates on a "service-learning" trip to Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia. In Cambodia, they planted 70 trees, met Channareth and assembled a dozen wheelchairs.
Justin Hatley, 30, of Seattle, who made the trip in the last stages of earning his MBA, said the experience was eye-opening. Like many Americans, Hatley tended to think of the Vietnam War and Cambodia's bloody Pol Pot regime as closed chapters of history.
He knew land mines had been used in the region, "but I didn't know they were still around and that kids and adults are still walking into them."
Le and Raven also nominated Channareth for the honorary doctorate. SU President Stephen Sundborg, announcing the selection, said Channareth "has reached out with compassion in service to other land-mine victims while working tirelessly to rid the world of these insidious weapons."
Channareth said he appreciates the honor, but that its real value will be in the attention he hopes it might bring to his cause.
That work is far from finished, he said. Although 156 nations have signed the Mine Ban Treaty, nearly 40 have not, including the U.S., Russia and China.
Some of the SU students who traveled to Cambodia have since worked on a petition campaign calling on President Obama to join the anti-land-mine effort. Although the U.S. has financially supported land-mine-removal efforts, a State Department spokesman said in 2009 that if it agreed to the ban, the U.S. might not be able to meet its national defense needs and protect its allies.
The zeal Channareth feels for his crusade has replaced the despair that lingered long after his injury. He and his wife now have six children, one in high school, one in college and four who are college graduates.
At speaking engagements, he often tells his listeners to "grow the flower of peace in your heart." A peaceful heart, he says, creates a peaceful person, which in turn would produce a peaceful family, community, county and world.
------------------------------
Cambodian activist to visit Mercer Island | The might of many
By MARY L. GRADY
Mercer Island Reporter Editor
Today, 7th June 2011
The man in the handcrafted wheelchair does not have legs to speak of. They were blown off when he stepped on a land mine in 1982 when he was a young soldier on patrol searching for signs of the Khmer Rouge.
But he is not visiting Seattle University or Mercer Island Presbyterian Church to talk of himself, or his long painful journey from that day. No. He is here to talk about Cambodia and how the stifling presence of perhaps millions of land mines, most set more than 30 years ago, still haunt his country and hold it back.
Channareth is in Seattle to accept a honorary doctorate degree this weekend from Seattle University for his 14 years as a volunteer at the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). ICBL won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Channareth was chosen to accept the award in Oslo on behalf of the organization along with the ICBL founder, Jody Williams.
The Cambodian man, 50, has a grade school education. He is thrilled by the honorary degree, he said, but wants the attention to be focused on the on-going effort by the ICBL to collect more signatures by individuals world wide to pressure world leaders including President Obama, who have yet to sign the treaty to do so.
“When you see the new buildings and big construction in the cities of my country, do not be confused,” he told students on campus last Friday. “To know what real life is in my country, go to Cambodia outside cities to see the real life of now,” he told them. “There you will see poor, poor people, people living day to day. Look at them to find out, he continued, or look at me,” he said, pointing to his legs.
The Cambodian’s long journey to Seattle started in 2007, when he met professor Le Xuan Hy of Seattle University who is an Island resident. Hy, a native of Vietnam, who held the Pigott-McCone endowed chair at that time, has championed the Cambodian and his mission.
He met Channareth in the workshop where he works when he is not campaigning or gathering signatures for the ICBL.
There he saw a man who was able to straddle both worlds — that of his simple beginnings and the complexities of bringing global pressure to bear on the practice of war that involved land mines, he said.
Hy came back to Seattle University to tell Channareth’s story. As a part of its commitment to promoting and championing of social justice, the university later sent students to see the Jesuit Refugee Center where Channareth worked in Siem Reap on a service learning trip.
Channareth has spoken to kings, presidents and prime ministers all over the world for ICBL. The organization has gotten more than 150 countries to sign the agreement to ban land mines; and to end manufacture and ensure their disposal. But there is so much more to do.
Neither the United States nor China have yet to sign the treaty.
His mission here is to obtain signatures of as many people as possible to demonstrate the depth of opposition to land mines to convince world leaders to sign the land mine treaty. He asks each and everyone he meets to show support.
“Mr. Channareth has reached out with compassion in service to other land mine victims, while working tirelessly to rid the world of these insidious weapons,” said Seattle University President Stephen Sundborg, S.J.
“He is an inspiring example to our students of our mission as a university that empowers leaders for a just and humane world.”
Channareth greets each visitor with a humble greeting, pressing his palms together with a bow of his head. His gaze is serene but unblinking. What remains of his wrecked legs are uncovered. He does not have prosthetics. He is speaks quietly yet is animated. Despite his many years in a wheelchair, his spine is straight, his body lean.
His English is remarkably good, despite learning the language by standing outside an open classroom window to listen to a teacher.
Channareth did not have a baht (a few cents) to pay to attend class each day. A friend who did would open the window for him to hear.
Channareth’s personal story mirrors the story of thousands if not millions of Cambodian people whose lives coincided with the Vietnam conflict and the civil wars in Cambodia that followed.
He was perhaps 20 years old when his parents were murdered by the Pol Pot regime. His father burned to death. His mother, Chinese, simply disappeared. His remaining family struggled.
Feeling there was not other choice, he left his home and walked for a week to find work at what turned out to be refugee camps at the Thai-Cambodia border. He found that there was no aid for men, only women. Men could only join the military to live, he explained. They would be fed but not paid.
After his injury, Channareth received training in both engine repair, typing and welding. After years in the camps, he and the family he had begun there, left to return to Cambodia and what he hoped was a brighter future.
They made their way to capitol city of Phnom Phen where there was no work for a disabled man, only begging.
He was devastated. “How will I be responsible for my family,” he said.
Instead of rebuilding their country after the Vietnam war, opposing regimes fought with each other. The result was the slaughter and suffering imposed on millions. Left behind are an equal number of hidden explosives everywhere, he said.
After the fighting stopped, people left the rural areas and went to the city, he explained. The rural lands were all but abandoned because of the land mines. The cities were full of their victims.
After many months in Phnom Phen, Channareth found work through the Jesuit Refugee Mission. There he applied the training he had obtained in the camps to building wheelchairs. A religious sister at the camp noticed his English and he found himself interpreting for the visitors that came to the mission. That lead to his work with the ICBL.
At one point he personally delivered a paper bundle of 400,000 signatures neatly balanced on his wheelchair to government officials.
“‘They said thank you, we will keep them for you,’” he remembered with a smile. “I took them back with me.”
To learn more and to sign the electronic petition visit the Seattle University commencement ceremony at www.seattleu.edu/commencement.
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