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Archive for the ‘North Korea’ Category

The EU, with American backing, has finally presented a resolution about North Korea to the UN Human Rights Commission:

The European Union (EU), backed by countries including the United States, expressed concern on Thursday at reports of grave and systematic abuses in North Korea, including “infanticide in prison and labor camps.”

The EU, in a resolution presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on behalf of 37 countries, also called for appointing a special U.N. investigator for the first time to go to the reclusive, Stalinist country.

I’m wondering if they actually expect the UN to get off their asses and do something?

More horrors from North Korea (via Paul Jané):

North Korea built [a gulag system] on the Chinese model and added a new depravity — child political prisoners. Neither the Soviets nor the Chinese sent children to the concentration camps but the Dear Leader sends the entire family. One of the best accounts of the North Korean gulag is written by someone who was sent to the camps at the age of nine, because his grandfather had offended the system. His sister was only seven; she was also sent to prison. In North Korea, the children of political prisoners are called “seedlings.” Official propaganda proscribes the proper treatment of these children, “desiccate the seedlings of counterrevolution, pull them out by their roots, and exterminate every last one of them.”

The camps are designed to exploit the prisoners’ labor until they die. Prisoners are given difficult and dangerous labor such as mining under unsafe conditions. Children are assigned heavy work as well, such as logging. Even before the famine of the mid-1990s, prisoners, including children, were on rations that would not sustain life in the long run, much less allow for any sort of normal growth. Since the political prisoners are never released, there is no danger of them divulging military secrets; they are assigned to work on missiles and other special weapons. One camp, Camp #14, is notorious for its use of prisoners “as guinea pigs for developing chemical warfare technology,” according to information obtained by the Seoul Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights.

This stuff makes my stomach turn. And there’s more:

It’s bad luck to be an even moderately attractive young woman in the camps. High Communist Party officials troll the camps looking for victims to be used as sex slaves. If the women become pregnant, they are forced to have an abortion without anesthesia. When their usefulness is over, the women are murdered. Their deaths are covered up as “shot while trying to escape.” In much the same way, the Nazi “Death Doctor,” Josef Mengele, used to comb the arriving trains for an attractive evening companion, only to have her shot the next day.

No, this isn’t Germany 60 years ago. It’s happening in North Korea right now. And the world is content to do nothing about it, because North Korea is communist and communism is the solution to the evil capitalism of America and the Zionist Cabal and the evil Joooos that everyone’s so much more concerned about condemning. And besides, Kim Jong-Il has nuclear weapons probably and he’s crazy and he might use them so what can anyone do anyway? And it’s so far away so it’s easy to close our eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist, right? Especially cause nobody ever escapes from Camp #14 so there are no eyewitnesses to write books or go on speaking tours to raise awareness.

Sickening and disgusting, all of it.

Song Dae Ri got a last-minute reprieve from being deported to North Korea and is being allowed to stay in Canada (via Damian):

Ending months of uncertainty, the office of Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan stayed Mr. Ri’s removal order yesterday and ruled he is not a war criminal — contrary to the findings of the Immigration and Refugee Board, which rejected his asylum bid last September.

The ministry ruled that the risk Mr. Ri would be tortured or killed if deported outweighed any danger he may pose to Canada.

This reprive was widely expected… but it raises more questions than it answers. Again, I sense the public hasn’t been getting the whole story.

Canada’s Citizenship and Immigration board has essentially signed the death sentence of Song Dae Ri, a North Korean defector who escaped with his son to Canada and petitioned for refugee status. With this ruling, the board has thrown out the temporary reprieve it issued to Ri.

Once again, I’ll state that without knowing all the facts of the case, it’s hard to judge. There have been numerous cases of people claiming refugee status who were clearly abusing the system.

But even Immigration Canada doesn’t seem to think that Ri is guilty of any crimes against humanity:

Robert Genier, a senior analyst with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, endorsed a much-criticized decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board. That ruling found Mr. Ri guilty of war crimes merely for being a trade official in North Korea’s secretive, repressive regime. No allegations of specific crimes against humanity have been made against him, and Canada’s War Crimes Unit found no evidence of wrongdoing.

[ . . . ]

“I am satisfied [Mr. Ri] would be at risk of cruel and unusual punishment if he were to return to North Korea,” ruled C. Lemonde, a pre-removal risk assessment officer with the Canadian Border Services Agency.

However, Mr. Genier, a more senior immigration official in Ottawa, reviewed the findings and concluded last week that Mr. Ri was not entitled to Canada’s protection “because of the nature and severity of the acts committed” by him.

Something doesn’t jibe here. There’s a contradiction. Either he’s a war criminal or he’s not… but IRB seems to want it both ways.

The deportation order can still be stayed on humanitarian grounds:

A source in the Immigration Department indicated that Mr. Ri would likely get a favourable ruling and be permitted to stay.

Still, critics suggest the fact that he was twice labelled a war criminal shows the refugee-determination system is flawed. There has never been any specific evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Ri. But IRB member Bonnie Milliner found him complicit in crimes against humanity because he willingly joined the government and did not leave at the first available opportunity.

It’s not as though you can just hop on the first flight out, so that criteria seems harsh in light of the facts. But as they say, something smells fishy here. I suspect we’re not getting the whole story, and I wonder what’s not being said.

North Korea finally made mainstream media headlines… but the story is about an asylum applicant being deported by Canada back to North Korea and – he claims – certain death:

Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board has rejected the asylum case of a North Korean dissident even though the board agrees the man will likely be executed for treason if deported to his homeland.

The IRB has allowed the man’s six-year-old son to remain in Canada, because as the son of a dissident he would face persecution, while a removal order has been issued for his father, his only living parent.

Song Dae Ri, a trade official, was posted to North Korea’s embassy in Beijing before he defected to Canada with his son and wife in August, 2001. His wife was lured home by her parents before she had a chance to make a refugee claim, and in April, 2002, was executed in North Korea.

[ . . . ]

IRB member Bonnie Milliner ruled that Mr. Ri will likely be executed for treason if returned home, but said he was not “deserving of Canada’s protection” because he was complicit in crimes against humanity merely for being a member of Kim Jong-il’s government. She made that ruling despite written assurances from Canada’s War Crimes Unit that Mr. Ri was “not a person of interest to them” and that there was no evidence he had committed crimes against humanity.

I don’t like to leap to judgments about individual cases, because there is usually more to a story than what makes the paper. That said, if the Globe and Mail article is accurate, this is a terrible miscarriage of justice on the part of the Canadian Government.

Even the IRB isn’t claiming that Ri was involved in wrongdoings beyond simply living in North Korea. Obviously, they have some kind of rule that any member of the government is ineligible for refugee status… but in a communist country, where virtually everyone is a member of the government in some way, this rule is pretty ridiculous. Furthermore, they are allowing Ri’s son to stay on the grounds that his life is in danger because of persecution of his father. That seems pretty self-contradictory to me.

Ri is becoming yet another “poster case” for activists lobbying for a more open refugee system in Canada. If he deserves it, I hope the government reverses its decision and allows him to stay. The flip side, of course, is that if it turns out he really was involved in the horrible crimes against humanity being perpetuated by Kim Jong-Il’s regime, that it will only make it that much harder on legitimate refugee claimants to garner sympathy. From the looks of it, though, all Ri did was lose his wife and just barely manage to escape with his son. If that’s true, than sending him back is tantamount to state-sanctioned murder.

Instapundit linked to a Washington Post article by columnist Anne Appelbaum about why nobody seems to care:

Auschwitz Under Our Noses

Nowadays, it seems impossible to understand why so few people, at the time of the Auschwitz liberation, even knew that the camp existed. It seems even harder to explain why those who did know did nothing. In recent years a plethora of respectable institutions — the Vatican, the U.S. government, the international Jewish community, the Allied commanders — have all been accused of “allowing” the Holocaust to occur, through ignorance or ill will or fear, or simply because there were other priorities, such as fighting the war.

We shake our heads self-righteously, certain that if we’d been there, liberation would have come earlier — all the while failing to see that the present is no different.

[ . . . ]

In the days since the documentary aired, few other news organizations have picked up the story either. There are other priorities: the president’s budget, ricin in the Senate office building, David Kay’s testimony, a murder of a high school student, Super Tuesday, Janet Jackson. With the possible exception of the last, these are all genuinely important subjects. They are issues people care deeply about. North Korea is far away and, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem there’s a lot we can do about it.

Later — in 10 years, or in 60 — it will surely turn out that quite a lot was known in 2004 about the camps of North Korea. It will turn out that information collected by various human rights groups, South Korean churches, oddball journalists and spies added up to a damning and largely accurate picture of an evil regime. It will also turn out that there were things that could have been done, approaches the South Korean government might have made, diplomatic channels the U.S. government might have opened, pressure the Chinese might have applied.

Historians in Asia, Europe and here will finger various institutions, just as we do now, and demand they justify their past actions. And no one will be able to understand how it was possible that we knew of the existence of the gas chambers but failed to act.

That emphasis was mine. And it pretty much sums up why I keep coming back to this story and feeling that it’s so important. Sure, there are plenty of horrible human rights abuses going on right under our noses. But the parallels with this one have crept under my skin, because of how we – as individuals and as a society – may go down in history for failing to pay any attention.

Yad Vashem has expressed its outrage at North Korea about the horrible reports of gas chambers and human torture in concentration camps. Yad Vashem, as most of you know, is the main Holocaust Memorial Center in Israel. (Hat tip: Lynn):

Yad Vashem is appalled by reports of North Korea’s use of gas chambers to murder and perform medical experiments on political dissidents and their families. Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate Avner Shalev has sent an urgent letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in which he calls for a full investigation of this insidious abuse of human rights. The issue is all the more severe due to North Korea’s status as a member of the UN. The internment, torture, and murder of North Korean political dissenters and their families was recently reported by the BBC.

In his letter, Shalev states with alarm that only six decades after the utilization of gas chambers to exterminate European Jewry, North Korea has apparently employed them against thousands of its own citizens. “The lives of untold thousands of North Koreans are in danger because their totalitarian government perceives them as a threat”, Shalev writes. “Although the rationale, scale, and context are vastly different, the chilling image of the murderers coolly watching their victims’ death agonies is all too reminiscent of Nazi barbarism.”

The important thing here is Yad Vashem’s reaction, not the seemingly ridiculously benign steps that it is requesting the UN to take. Everyone knows that in these situatuions the UN has no real power. But if enough organizations such as Yad Vashem start speaking out, maybe they can make a difference.

So you think maybe this is North Korea’s attempt to deflect attention from the embarrassing reports of torture and death camps that emerged these past few days?

North Korea has indicated it is prepared to resume talks soon on its nuclear arms program, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Tuesday.

One round of talks involving North and South Korea (news – web sites), the United States, China, Japan and Russia was held last year in Beijing but ended inconclusively.

Come to think of it, it’s doubtful, given how little news coverage the torture and experimentation reports have gotten. Maybe the regime is just trying to head it off. Or maybe they don’t understand how willing the world is to ignore such atrocities.

Chris at FreeNorthKorea.net has republished an NBC News report from last year about the camps:

Among NBC News’ findings:

* At one camp, Camp 22 in Haengyong, some 50,000 prisoners toil each day in conditions that U.S. officials and former inmates say results in the death of 20 percent to 25 percent of the prison population every year.

* Products made by prison laborers may wind up on U.S. store shelves, having been “washed” first through Chinese companies that serve as intermediaries.

* Entire families, including grandchildren, are incarcerated for even the most bland political statements.

* Forced abortions are carried out on pregnant women so that another generation of political dissidents will be “eradicated.”

* Inmates are used as human guinea pigs for testing biological and chemical agents, according to both former inmates and U.S. officials.

Chris wonders why there’s been so little interest about North Korea this past year:

Why Does The World Ignore North Korean Concentration Camp Atrocities?
This article was published around a year ago. But, even though it was in a major news outlet, it seemed to have little or no impact on American policy. Why?

Now the evidence on North Korea’s gas chambers has proved that the stories told by the defectors about the depraved chemical weapons tests on prisoners are true. A director of security for one of the biggest camps has defected and has even been interviewed on the BBC. Nobody is disputing what he has to say. But how many care? Asia has for so long, had a degree of suffering unmatched elsewhere on the globe.

[ . . . ]

Certainly, Kim Jong Il is a diabolical Hitler-like figure who is so blind to his people’s suffering that he uses them to test weapons. But human rights figures near the bottom of the list of the US’s goals for negotiating with North Korea. Can anyone, anywhere, be safe while this condition in North Korea persists? NO!

It’s 13 months later now. And who posted about this last year? I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t. But if embarrassment over not covering the story then prevents me from writing about it now, then shame on me.

As suspected, most of the major news outlets gave the North Korea story (see below) a cursory, back-page treatment.

I implored the blogosphere to do better. And some, at least, have.

Damian Penny wrote about the “People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps”. David Janes astutely observed that “there’s no obvious way to blame the US for this, so it’s not really happening, is it?”. Lynn B. urges us to read up and talk about it. Meryl Yourish has a brilliantly-written post entitled “North Korea is Not Our Problem”.

I’ll update this throughout the day with (hopefully) more. Let’s not allow this to become a one-day headline.

Update: Paul Jané finds the words that failed me. Jonathan is feeling “curiously dispassionate”… which I find interesting in light of my reaction to the story, which was more emotional than even I expected. And Spin Killer weighs in.