Silent Soldiers

Cambodia is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world. SILENT SOLDIERS tells the story of Te Kimiti Gilbert, a Māori engineer who began his de-mining career with the United Nations in Cambodia back in 1993. It follows his latest work including a mine clearance project being trialled using giant African rats.

Te Kimiti Gilbert was instrumental in the introduction of a revolutionary way of detecting landmines in Cambodia. Using giant African rats.

When we made this doco in 2015, Cambodia was still one of the most mine affected countries in the world. In 1997 Cambodia signed the Mine Ban Treaty along with 163 other countries - they have until 2020 to remove an estimated 6 million mines.

More than 64,000 mine casualties have been recorded since 1979. In 1991 NZ soldiers were deployed to Cambodia as mine clearance specialists. Te Kimiti Gilbert was one of those NZ soldiers. He was sent to Siem Reap to teach demobilised Khmer soldiers to de-mine.

22 years later he has returned as Head of Mine Actions for a Belgian NGO called APOPO, who specialise in training and using giant African rats to detect land mines and bombs. These rats have been used successfully in Mozambique and Angola, proving themselves to be very effective.

The documentary takes us to see the rats at the training centre in Morogoro, Tanzania.