Aki Ra

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Aki Ra 2006

Aki Ra (born around 1970 to 1973 as Eoun Yeak in Siem Reap , Cambodia ) is a former Cambodian child soldier and initiator of the organization Cambodian Self Help Demining . He also runs the Cambodia Landmine Museum , a museum that provides information about landmines and their dangers.

Life

Ra was born in the early 1970s in the province of Siem Reap in Cambodia to a teacher and a seamstress. His birth name was Eoun Yeak. Under the rule of the Khmer Rouge he was separated from his parents and grew up in a camp, where he was initially employed as a helper for the soldiers and later as a child soldier of the Khmer Rouge. When he was around five years old, his parents were murdered by the Khmer Rouge. While Ra was growing up, he was mainly shaped by constant hunger and fear of the arbitrariness of the Khmer, to whom, as he writes, human life meant nothing.

After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979 , Aki Ra initially fought on the side of the Khmer Rouge. In 1983 he was captured by Vietnamese soldiers. He was accepted into the combat troops of the Vietnamese army against the Khmer and, as before, laid numerous land mines during this time. After Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia, Aki Ra was accepted into the Cambodian army and continued to fight against the Khmer Rouge. In the Cambodian army he was able to catch up on a school education from 1990 onwards and learned to read and write. When the United Nations started a mine clearance mission after the Paris peace negotiations in the early 1990s, Aki Ra also received training as a mine clearer. It was during this time that he was nicknamed Aki Ra , as he was often compared to industrial machines from the Japanese manufacturer Akira-Seiki . He later adopted this name entirely.

After the end of the UN mission in Cambodia, Ra started working independently from 1993 on further clearing landmines. Ra describes this as part of his responsibility to Cambodia, as he himself had a large part in mining the country. Due to the lack of equipment, Ra worked with the simplest means such as sticks or a knife. Because numerous mines and weapons accumulated over time, Ra exhibited them in a specially opened museum from 1999. Here he also worked on educating the population about the dangers and rules of conduct related to mines. He began training other former child soldiers and in 2003 founded the organization Cambodian Self Help Demining (CSHD). According to its own information, the CSHD has cleared minefields in 177 minefields in 175 villages and made over 5 million square meters of land usable again. Ra claims to have personally cleared almost 50,000 mines.

Since the 1990s, Ra has also supported the establishment of schools in rural and remote areas of Cambodia to enable the local children to go to school. By 2019, 22 schools had been set up as part of the Rural Schools Village Program and around 3000 Cambodians had been given a school education.

Aki Ra is married and has one son.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Cambodian Self Help Demining - Aki Ra's Story . Archived from the original on July 5, 2015. Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Cambodian man clears land mines he set decades ago . CNN . Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b Riemer-Schadendorf, Kevin: Borderline experience . In: Huffmann, Johann-Friedrich (Ed.): Reise, Reise! 1st edition. tape 23 . Frieling & Huffmann, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-8280-3450-1 , pp. 157-180 .
  4. ^ Cambodian Self Help Demining - About Us . Retrieved June 26, 2020.
  5. ^ Cambodian Self Help Demining . Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  6. ↑ A Former Child Soldier Makes Cambodia Safe From Land Mines . Retrieved October 5, 2015.
  7. ^ Cambodian Self Help Demining - RSVP Cambodia . Retrieved October 5, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Ra, Aki
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yeak, Eoun
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cambodian child soldier and initiator of the organization Cambodian Self Help Demining
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: between 1970 and 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Siem Reap , Cambodia