The most important news and commentary to read right now. - The Slatest - Slate Magazine
A fabled war photographer was maimed Saturday when he stepped on a land mine while on patrol with American troops in southern Afghanistan. Joao Silva, who was shooting for the New York Times, has covered wars for a decade and a half. Until Saturday, he was the only member of the “Bang Bang Club,” a group of four young photographers who got their start in South Africa in the 90s, to have made it through his career uninjured (one was shot and killed in South Africa, another committed suicide, and the other retired after catching one too many bullets). Sunday, Silva’s legs were amputated below the knee at an American hospital in Germany. In a passionate piece for Foreign Policy, veteran conflict reporter Paul Salopek argues that “land mines are war crimes” and castigates the U.S. for failing to sign the international Mine Ban Treaty. Despite international efforts to curtail their use, mines have killed more than 73,500 people in the last 10 years, at least 60 percent of them civilians. In refusing to sign the Mine Ban Treaty, the U.S. joins the “altogether more unsavory version of the Bang Bang Club with authoritarian states such as Iran, Russia, Burma, and China.” Although the U.S. (which says mines are necessary to defend South Korea from its northern neighbor) isn’t manufacturing mines anymore, it has 17 million mines in storage, “stockpiled, like malevolent eggs, for future use if needed.”
