The government’s main demining operator will open a 2-hectare landmine museum at an undisclosed cost in Siem Reap City today, at a time when the government is struggling to attract donors for mine clearance work that is well behind schedule.
The Peace Museum of Mine Action, housed at the regional headquarters of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), about a dozen kilometers from downtown Siem Reap, will give visitors a window into the history of one of the most heavily mined and bombarded countries in the world.
“I believe it will be a good lesson for peace after the war, the impact from the war,” CMAC director Heng Ratana said on Wednesday. “When they walk through they will understand the high risk to the community.”
Today’s inauguration is not so much an opening as an expansion.
The headquarters already housed a large room packed with displays of some of the millions of mines, bombs and rockets recovered and defused from across Cambodia over the years. The new museum spreads out the inventory across the building with more spacious displays and dioramas of falling and fallen bombs. Outside are decommissioned excavators and other examples of the equipment used to clear them, and mock-ups of a war-era battlefield and a minefield being cleared.
CMAC, by far the largest deminer in the country, hopes the museum will draw in some of the 2 million-plus tourists who visit Siem Reap each year on their way to the nearby Angkor temples. Mr. Ratana said it might start charging for admission after a few months but had yet to decide when or how much.
A message posted to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Facebook page on Wednesday says the museum was funded by the premier himself.
Mr. Ratana said the government donated the land, but added that much of the money was donated by NGOs and development partners. He declined to provide even a rough estimate of the costs to build and run the museum and said it would be premature to identify the donors before the inauguration.
The countries donating the most to clearing Cambodia include the U.S., Australia and Japan. A few other countries also donate through the U.N. and a handful of private operators.
But after years—in some cases decades—of support, and new conflict hotspots redefining global aid priorities, donations are drying up. The roughly $10 million CMAC secured last year was nearly a third less than the year before. And work is far from over.
Source: The Cambodia Daily