Food As a Weapon?

Deceptive Headline of the Month goes to Channel News Asia for this beaut: ” New US human rights envoy suggests food aid weapon against North Korea.”

Weapon against whom? The United States has sent food to the North for years, but we’ve never had much confidence that it’s been feeding the intended recipients. Which is why it’s nice that the article finally got around to saying this:

Non-governmental groups have accused North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il’s regime of widespread human rights abuses, including deliberate starvation, abduction, family separations, religious persecution, trafficking of women and children, inhumane prison conditions, the use of gas chambers and the likely practice of genocide.

The abuses had exacerbated food shortages in North Korea and led to an exodus of North Korean refugees to bordering countries, especially China, which had been accused of forced repatriation, the groups charged.

A recent report by the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a rights group, said food donations to North Korea, estimated at about two billion dollars over the past decade, were not being delivered to the North’s most vulnerable populations — children, pregnant women and the elderly.

I don’t see how the headline writer here can honestly conclude that Lefkowitz was suggesting using food as a weapon. At the very least, some clarification would have been in order. If need be, I will try to get it myself.