ASEANEWS HEADLINE-WAR AFTER MATH | SIEM REAP, Cambodia: Giant rats leading land mine detection efforts in Cambodia
Mott Sreymom, 34, a rat handler with the humanitarian demining organisation APOPO, carries an African giant pouched rat back from a landmine field in Siem Reap, Cambodia, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. PHOTO: AP
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SIEM REAP, Cambodia (AP) — Rats may send some squealing, but in Cambodia, teams of the not-so-little critters have become indispensable in helping specialists detect land mines that have killed and maimed thousands in the Southeast Asian country.
The African giant pouched rats, which can grow up to 45 centimeters (around 18 inches) and weigh up to 1.5 kilograms (more than 3 pounds), are on the front line, making their way nimbly across fields to signal to their handlers when they get a whiff of TNT, used in most land mines and explosive ordnance.
“While working with these rats, I have always found mines and they have never skipped a single one,” said Mott Sreymom, a rat handler at APOPO, a humanitarian demining group that trains and deploys rodent detection teams across the world.
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“I really trust these mine detection rats,” Mott told The Associated Press while on her lunch break after working on a land mine field in the province of Siem Reap.
After three decades of conflict in the previous century, remnants of war littered approximately 4,500 square kilometers (about 1,737 square miles) of Cambodian land, according to a survey by the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA) in 2004. This affected all 25 Cambodian provinces and nearly half of the country’s 14,000 villages.
As of 2018, CMAA reported 1,970 square kilometers (760 square miles) remain uncleared.
The rats have a keen sense of smell, making them a favorite at APOPO, which also employs land mine-detecting dog teams.
“Dogs and rats are better compared to other animals because they are trainable,” said Alberto Zacarias, a field supervisor of APOPO’s technical survey dog teams, adding that they are also friendly and easily learn commands.
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Since demining officially began in Cambodia in 1992, more than 1.1 million mines have been cleared, as well as approximately 2.9 million other explosive remnants of war, according to a 2022 government demining progress report.
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Landmine victims wait in line at the Siem Reap Physical Rehabilitation Centre in Cambodia on Tuesday, June 10, 2025. PHOTO: AP
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And the African giant pouched rats are doing their part.
“We work with them almost daily, so we get closer,” Mott said. “They are very friendly and they don’t move around and get scared. They are like family.”
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Cambodia arrests over 200 Vietnam citizens in cyberscam crackdown
PHNOM PENH (AFP) – Cambodian authorities have arrested more than 200 Vietnamese nationals in Internet scam centre raids, police said yesterday, as Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered a crackdown on cybercrime sweatshops.
The United Nations has described Southeast Asia as the “ground zero” of scam centres, where workers typically use romance or business cons to defraud social media users of an estimated USD40 billion annually.
Hun Manet issued a directive made public on Tuesday, telling law enforcement and the military “to prevent and crack down on online scams”, warning they risk losing their jobs if they fail to take action. Police in the capital Phnom Penh said they raided two buildings housing scammers on Monday and Tuesday, arresting 149 Vietnamese nationals alongside three Chinese citizens and 85 Cambodians.
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In the coastal city of Sihanoukville, raids on Tuesday at four locations saw 63 Vietnamese nationals arrested and 54 computers seized, according to a police report seen by AFP yesterday.
Many of those freed from Southeast Asian scam centres say they were trafficked or lured there under false pretences. Abuses in Cambodia’s scam centres are happening on a “mass scale”, a report published last month by Amnesty International said.
There are at least 53 scam compounds in Cambodia where organised criminal groups carry out human trafficking, forced labour, child labour, torture, deprivation of liberty and slavery, the report said.
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