Martial arts star calls for landmine ban

>Archive - PWW Print Edition Archive - 2005 Editions - Apr 30, 2005


 

Action movie star Jackie Chan has called for a global landmine ban at the start of a three-day visit to Cambodia. Chan, who is scouting locations in the country to make a film on the subject, said, “I have to stop them. They are hurting so many children.”

Chan is visiting recovering victims and a mine education project in northwest Cambodia as part of an Asian tour for the United Nations Children’s Fund. About 4,200 people have been killed by landmines in Cambodia since 2000.

Chan, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, arrived by plane in Battambang, a town 155 miles northwest of the capital Phnom Penh, April 20. “I want to make a film to promote the campaign to stop land mines,” Chan told reporters. Chan will meet landmine victims at a Battambang hospital and visit the heavily mined nearby Pailin area.

Chan, star of films like “Shanghai Noon” and “Around the World in 80 Days,” will be given a chance to help experts detonate unexploded mines.

Chan first met child landmine amputees during a 2004 UNICEF HIV-awareness visit to the Siem Reap province, Cambodia’s main tourist destination. The UN says a quarter of people killed by landmines are children. “He was very moved by what happened to them and wanted to come back,” said a UNICEF spokesman.