Singapore makes land mines!

Land mines. Horrible little weapons. Hide in the ground. Blow people up a lot.

What's especially horrible about them is that they often remain hidden in the ground long after the conflicts they were meant for have ended. According to the United Nations Mine Action Service, landmines affect at least 60 countries and injure or kill between 15,000 and 20,000 people every year. What's even worse is that children are particularly at risk from mines- they're less likely to survive a blast as compared to an adult and more likely to pick up a mine, not knowing what it is.

One of Singapore's ASEAN partners, Cambodia, saw one of the bloodiest civil wars and genocides of the 20th century. Over the course of 30 years of conflict, an estimated 4-6 million land mines were strewn across the country. Many of them remain unexploded. In 2004, there were 898 landmine casualties in the country. the United Nations and UNICEF have condemned the use of land mines as being un-humanitarian and continue to push for a worldwide ban on their production and use. The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (AKA the Ottawa Treaty), an international agreement that bans antipersonnel land mines, has been ratified by 149 states.

Singapore is not one of them.

According to the International Campaign to Ban Land Mine's 2004 Land Mine Monitor report, as of that year, Singapore was one of 15 mine producers globally (though it did declare an indefinite moratorium on land mine exports in 1998- it is unknown where Singapore exported land mines to prior to that). Singapore Technologies Kinetics (a branch of the government-linked company Singapore Technologies Engineering) is the country's sole manufacture of antipersonnel mines, according to the ICBLM's 2005 Land Mine Monitor report (perhaps unsurprisingly, the company's website makes no mention of the weapons).

A Singapore government representative, in a letter to Land Mine Monitor, cited "legitimate security concerns and right to self-defense of states" as the reasons behind the country not acceding to the Mine Ban Treaty. I can see how antivehicle mines (unless they have anti-handling devices, in which case they're effectively the same as antipersonnel mines in terms of danger to innocents) could be useful to the military- but in any case, those aren't banned by the treaty. Only antipersonnel mines are.

I fail to see how those are essential to the national security of this nation. In addition, countries who sign the treaty are allowed to keep a limited amount of mines for mine-clearance and detection training purposes, so it can't be argued that the need for training is a legitimate reason for not signing the treaty. I'm honestly stumped as to why the government refuses to sign the treaty, despite having voted in favour of a UN General Assembly resolution (59/84) that promotes universalization and implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty in December of 2004. Bit of a double-standard there, ey?

For a country that wants to make itself the center of hip and cool, this just ain't cool at all.