Thursday, 19 May 2016

This is the moment that I have feared for 15 years, since Project RENEW was launched in 2001.

Yesterday Ngo Thien Khiet was killed by a cluster munition at a field site in Quang Tri Province, near the former DMZ.  The 45-year-old deminer, a senior technician with eight years’ experience, was directing his team members in an area where several cluster bombs had been found and marked for destruction.

RENEW’s explosive ordnance disposal specialists and clearance technicians are highly trained, and professional.  Safety is their top priority.  Their efforts have resulted in the destruction of more than 30,000 bombs and other munitions over the years, without a single accident, injury, or death.

Until yesterday.

The RENEW staff, colleagues from Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) and other NGOs, provincial officials and of course friends and family of Khiet are grieving this loss of a dear friend and colleague, a patriot who sacrificed his life in peacetime to dismantle the instruments of death left behind in wartime.

Chuck Searcy

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Ngô Thiện Khiết

Mine Action ALERT

RENEW Deminer Dies From Injuries After Cluster Bomb Accident

19 May 2016

A cluster bomb explosion in Quang Tri Province has killed one deminer and injured another, both technical staff managed by Project RENEW and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA).  The accident occurred on Wednesday, 18 May, in Co Luy Village of Hai Ba Commune, Hai Lang District.

Tiếp tục đọc “RENEW Deminer Dies From Injuries After Cluster Bomb Accident” →

Talk Vietnam
18 May 2016 

An unusual meeting took place on Monday in the coastal city of Hai Phong in northern Vietnam between the son of a former U.S. prisoner of war (POW) and the Vietnamese prison warden who kept a watch on his father.

Former prison warden Senior Colonel Tran Trong Duyet welcomes Thomas Eugene Wilbur,whose father was a POW at the Hoa Lo Prison (known by Americans as the “Hanoi Hilton”).

The warden in question was Senior Colonel Tran Trong Duyet, who was in charge of Hoa Lo Prison in Hanoi from 1968 to 1973. Tiếp tục đọc “Healing handshake: Son of US ex-POW meets former warden in Vietnam” →