'This is outrageous'

V. Tony Hauser's photograph of Hak, on display in the Dal SUB.

Poy’s gaze is intense, his stance confident. He is young and handsome, photographed to his best effect in black-and-white. He wants to be a boxer.

He has one eye and one arm.

Like the other youths in V. Tony Hauser’s exhibit, Living With Land Mines, Poy lost his eye and arm in a landmine explosion. Another girl lost her leg gathering firewood; a boy played with a pineapple mine, not realizing what it was. These are the survivors – the ones still living with land mines, and their faces stare out from a life-sized photographical exhibit in the SUB.

The children Mr. Hauser photographed reside at the Cambodia Land Mine Museum and Relief Facility; some orphans, some leaving families to live and attend school there. The nonprofit facility was founded by a Cambodian named Aki Ra. Years ago, he was trained as a child soldier by the Khmer Rouge and used to disarm mines. Now Aki Ra is focused on the future – and on giving a future to the children attending school at CLMMRF.

Mr. Hauser entered the picture by accident. While doing a project in Cambodia, he took some extra time to explore the country; a friend recommended he visit the land mine museum.

“I saw these kids with missing limbs and I was… sort of taken aback.” He pauses. “I didn’t expect this to be in a museum, these children with mangled limbs... incredible, their tenacity, their spirit. How can they function?” At the museum, Mr. Hauser befriended Hak, a Cambodian child and war amputee.

Mr. Hauser returned to Cambodia a year later – this time with a 4 by 8 camera. He sought out Hak. “I told him why I came back and he introduced me to the wife of Aki Ra… Hak and her helped me organize the kids. Not everyone wanted to have their photograph taken, and that’s fine.”

Overall, Mr. Hauser’s second visit to Cambodia lasted a week; he spent four days taking photographs. “You want to stand at a rooftop and scream ‘look at these pictures! Look at the world! Look at the way we live!’… There is so much need… when you come home, you are shocked by the injustice of the world. Not everybody has to have a car. Not everybody has to have two cars. But everybody has to have the basics.”

Two Living With Land Mines exhibits are simultaneously touring Canadian universities. They’re totally nonprofit pieces which have been “really well received everywhere.” Living With Land Mines depicts amputees and victims of war – but the focus is not on their lives, not how close they came to death. Chet is a dancer. Boreak wants to be a doctor. Voleak loves theatre, wants to be a tour guide – she alone of the children pictured has both arms and legs. “Whatever her dilemma was …” Mr. Hauser explains, “Everybody was affected in this country by this endless war ... She belongs to the community.”

The problem of land mines isn’t going to go away without our help. Hauser is adamant that university students write letters to members of parliament, get involved, become aware. Hauser’s enemy is no one group or person – it’s apathy. “When you see a country where a thousand a year are being killed by land mines… if it happened here in the same ratio, it would mean 3,000 people a year are being killed by landmines.” He pauses. “Look into their eyes and say, ‘Oh. That’s a person like me. This is outrageous.’”

Living With Land Mines is on display in the lobby of the SUB until Saturday, Nov. 27. The exhibition is presented by Dalhousie Student Union and International Student & Exchange Services office.