Date Killed: April 4, 2003

CPI Assistance: Family Bereavement Grant; General Scholarship; support for income-generating activities; emergency medical treatment.

CPI considers the family members of a person killed by landmines or UXO to be survivors. Quite often the person killed is the family's main breadwinner. Our program assists the family through their dificult time and if the person killed was a parent to young children, we assist the children with scholarship money.

Nguyen Ky Duong and his younger brother, Nguyen Van Luong, still live in the village they grew up in. The two brothers, together with seven of their good friends, work nearby in the fields. They all have similar economic and social circumstances: quite poor, with several siblings, and able to do only farming to earn a living. Since they all have large families, they are able to work quite a bit of land – more than they actually own. Their income still remains dangerously low.

They all looked forward to the income they would reap from the new rice harvest in a month, but in the meantime, they had been hired to do some logging work for a week. They were all excited to earn some additional money.

Duong rose at 6:30am on April 4th, 2003. The men had been working in the woods for nearly a week, and luckily no one had been hit by falling branches, trees, or any other hazards. This was their last day in the woods, and a truck would be coming in a couple hours to pick them up and take them home. They had all walked a long way the day before to reach this pick-up location. Everyone was tired but satisfied with the hard work they’d done, and were happy to return home.

Duong built a small fire to cook rice for everyone’s breakfast. He didn’t bother to wake anyone else up since it was an easy task. When his co-workers awoke and smelled the rice cooking, they got up and joined Duong near the fire. The morning air was fresh and crisp in the woods, and they all sat in contentment as they watched the rice cook.

As Duong reached for the pot hanging over the fire, the fire seemed to just explode in front of them.

Duong had inadvertently built the morning fire directly above a buried live UXO.

The blast from the explosion sent everything up in the air, in all directions. The five men collapsed.

Duong was killed immediately as he was sitting closest to the detonation point. His abdomen and chest were perforated with many fragments, and a particularly large fragment severed his throat. Luckily the other men sitting next to Duong did not have sustain any life-threatening injuries, but they were all injured by small fragments imbedded in their legs and hands.

The eight men arrived with Duong’s body at the Phuc Trach commune aid station at 8:00pm on the same day. On April 8th, the injured men were forwarded to Viet Nam-Cuba Hospital for further treatment.

Duong had lived separately from his parents after marrying a woman from the same village. At the time of his death, Duong and his wife had one 2-year-old daughter, and another one on the way.

To support Duong’s widow and two children, CPI covered all the costs of Duong’s funeral. His daughter received a scholarship so that she could continue her studies even though the family’s breadwinner was gone. CPI also purchased a cow for Duong’s widow, so that she could farm her land with more ease and earn money faster. CPI covered the costs of all the other men’s medical treatments.

Also injured: Nguyen Van Luong, 24, (Duong’s brother), farmer; 2) Nguyen Van Han, 25, male, farmer; 3) Le Van Phuong, 32, male, farmer (married); 4) Nguyen Van Tan, 29, male, farmer.