Peter Viggers, a Tory member of the defense select committee at the time, also spoke out, saying, “We all know landmines and other weapons are vicious and nasty. Members of the U.K.'s Conservative party, which was in power at the time, accused Diana of going against the government’s official policy, and of indicating her support of one party over another.Įarl Howe, the UK's then-junior defense minister called her a "loose cannon," and said she was uninformed about the issue of landmines. “By the mid-90s, there were so many landmine explosions killing innocent people around the globe every day, that the problem was called ‘an epidemic.’”ĭiana's support for an international treaty banning landmines-and her public work with groups seeking to eradicate them-was seen at the time as a political stance, not merely a charitable one. Back then, armies considered that antipersonnel landmines were a legitimate weapon somehow,” Chayer wrote me in an email. “Antipersonnel landmines had been in widespread use for decades before they were banned in 1997. His sentiment is echoed by Amelie Chayer, acting director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). “Now, everybody goes 'mines, yes of course they’re banned, why would we have it?' But in the ‘90s they were still seen by the military as of value,” Heslop told me. In 2017, it’s widely accepted that landmines are horrific weapons that disproportionally affect civilians-and that their destructive influence lasts long after armed conflict in a region is over-but during the late ‘90s, they were still a controversial subject. And I think she knew what she was doing.” And a beautiful woman who is not wearing a ball gown and diamond, but is wearing chinos and body armor doing a lonely walk through an area that and who was being cleared of mines. “A mother, a young mother with a little girl who’s lost her leg on a mine. “They very much tell a story,” he continued. Princess Diana sits with 13-year-old Sandra Thijika, who lost her leg to a mine. “If you were going to do a montage of pictures of the 20th century, I think those two images would stand a chance of getting into the top 100,” Paul Heslop, who accompanied Diana in Angola with Halo Trust back in 1997, and now serves as the Chief of Programme Planning and Management section of the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), said in a phone interview. Advocating against landmines has become her legacy, and there are few more iconic images of Diana than the one of her sitting alongside a young amputee or the photo of her decked out in body armor, face covered, standing next to a sign that literally reads “danger.” Never one to shy away from a difficult cause-her work with AIDS patients and the homeless in the 1980s and early '90s was also groundbreaking-Diana knew full well the publicity a trip like this would generate for the then-controversial issue, and she was right. In January of 1997, just a few months before the tragic car crash that would take her life, Princess Diana stepped out onto an active minefield in Angola to learn how de-miners clear away explosives. To mark the premiere of The Crown season six, we're resurfacing this story from 2017 about Princess Diana's legacy in the fight to eradicate landmines, as the show dives into her anti-landmine advocacy in the final weeks of her life.
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