George Town, 30th May 2022 - United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions can be treacherous for participants, as dying while on duty is the biggest risk they face on the field. According to the UN peacekeeping database, 4,127 UN peacekeepers have died in their mission from 1948 until March 31 this year. Police officer, DSP Kumares Raja Ratnam, 57, had his own near-death experience when on a UN peacekeeping police mission to East Timor in 2008.
The Kedahan was leading a task force of UN peacekeeping police to drive out armed pro-Indonesia militias from the forests of East Timor. They were tasked with sending members of the militia to rehabilitation centres so they could be reintegrated into the East Timor society.
While he and his team were escorting armed members of the militia to an airport, one of the soldiers pointed his rifle at him and his team at the airstrip. “The UN police managed to pin him down and confiscated his rifle. The situation was neutralised,” he told FMT in an interview in conjunction with UN Peacekeeping Day. “It was a tense moment that I cannot forget to this day.”
That incident, however, did nothing to deter DSP Kumares’ spirit as he went on to his next peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Sudan, in 2017, where he was the commander of the Malaysian contingent.
The desire to help his counterparts in conflict-ridden states took him to three peacekeeping police missions in three different countries – Mozambique, East Timor, and Sudan – between 1994 and 2018. He spent a year on each mission.
Read further on the Free Malaysia Today’s article through this link,