|
Tuesday, 29 June 2010 |
Singapore Democrats
 The Singapore Democrats have issued a statement calling on the Government to stop the manufacture of landmines and to sign a treaty to ban the making and use of such weapons. The statement was made in response to the on-going effort by the international community to rid society of the weapon.
In the statement, SDP Chairman Gandhi Ambalam pointed out that the weapon killed and maimed innocnet civilians more than they did army personnel. (See also report by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor)
The SDP calls on the PAP Government to stop the manufacture of landmines. Landmines are devastating not only to combatants directly involved in an armed conflict but also to the ordinary people who have no part at all in warfare.
It has been documented that use of landmines in conflict zones has resulted in more casualties among civilians than soldiers engaged in armed confrontation. Besides, hidden and buried landmines continue to remain a serious danger to civilians long after the end of hostility, leading to maiming and killing of civilians and children who go out to work and play.
What is disturbing is Singapore’s role in the manufacture of landmines. According to the International Convention to Ban Landmines (ICBL), Singapore has been identified among a dozen countries as a manufacturer of land mines. Singapore Technologies Kinetics (STK), a government-linked company, remains the only company in Singapore that manufactures landmines. STK was formally known as Singapore Technologies.
The ICBL, launched in 1992 has been able to bring 155 countries to sign the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction. Known as the Ottawa Treaty, it has also been ratified by 153 countries since coming into force in March 1999.
Singapore is not a signatory to the treaty. The SDP urges the PAP Government to sign and ratify the Ottawa Treaty in keeping with the sentiments and actions of the vast majority of countries. The Government cannot avoid its obligation and remain indifferent to contributing to international humanitarian mine action programmes.
Gandhi Ambalam
Chairman
Singapore Democratic Party
|
|
The SDP National Healthcare Plan
Danny the Democracy Bear
|
|
|
  Now available online here! |
|
Awesome Words
“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every Government on earth, general or particular, and what no just Government should refuse or rest on inference. ” Thomas Jefferson
News feeds
|
Support SDP , buy our 30th Anniversary Magazine here
You are asking government to forgo the profits the manufacturing of "mines" brings, just for some, to them, airy fairy humanitarian "ideals" of speculative saving the legs and feet of people and children?
Why, they are prepared to hang people, including 19 year olds, just for assumed, unproven more effective drugs deterrence compared to long imprisonment, nay, as LKY once admitted on BBC Hard-Talk, only to avoid prison over-crowding (we would have to build many more Changi prisons, he said, unperturbed and moral!).
So, too, they will flay you, tearing away your skin and flesh repeatedly off the same length of your behind, just so that this and the other corner, or a car or two will not be smeared, abusing a law meant to curb "subversion" and threats of "terror".