Human Rights – Page 17

April 28, 2009

It’s North Korea Freedom Week

The list of events this year looks extremely interesting. For most of these, you have to be in Washington D.C. I only wish I had time to attend more of these. More here. One that I’d especially like to attend is a screening of “Kimjongilia,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Calls for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee will also be heard, but so far, Lisa Ling is maintaining her public silence. Sort of. Their families...

Activism/Human Rights

April 1, 2009

Reporters Without Borders Petitions for the Release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Fittingly, Reporters Without Borders has launched an online petition for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are now facing a North Korean “trial” for allegedly crossing the border between China and North Korea. Regardless of which side of the border Ling and Lee were on, or your views about North Korea policy, every reasonable person should agree that holding Ling and Lee is unjustified; indeed, it’s clear that North Korea is holding them as “bargaining chips,” which...

Activism/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Refugees

March 26, 2009

Chris Hill Lies to Entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sam Brownback’s Finest Hour

[Updated below.] [A]s the current assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, [Christopher Hill] presided over negotiations with North Korea that deliberately minimized focus on the bleak human rights record of that country, ignored its nuclear proliferation, and had the practical effect of affirming its nuclear weapons capability. Hill also has a troubling hotdog tendency to play by his own rules, to the detriment of U.S. diplomacy…. Hill’s brand of cowboy diplomacy might be justified if it...

Human Rights/Terrorism/Iraq/U.S. Politics

February 26, 2009

State Dept. Releases Annual Human Rights Report

The State Department has released its 2008 country reports on human rights. The North Korea report is here, and it reflects no improvements in the abysmal state of life, such as it is, in North Korea. It features this litany of arbitrary murders by the state’s agents: During the year the South Korean nongovernmental research organization North Korean Human Rights Infringement Record Center reported that North Korea carried out 901 public executions in 2007. North Korea also reportedly carried out...

Human Rights

February 26, 2009

Japanese Human Rights Group Launches Spam Fax Campaign Against N. Korea

The Japanese NGO ReACH, which advocates for the return of abducted Japanese citizens and for human rights in North Korea, has assembled a long list of known North Korean fax numbers, which I’ve published here for all the world to see, below the fold. REACH is calling on Japan’s massive community of netizens (and you, too!) to send spam faxes to these numbers, and offers some recommendations to maximize the subversive/disruptive effect if you decide to join the fun: –...

Abductions/Activism/Japan & Korea

February 21, 2009

Human Rights Industry Reaps What It Sows; Humanity Loses

If I had to pick one single moment when the Human Rights Industry lost its focus on the objective measurement of evil, this statement by Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan may be it: “A new agenda is in the making, with the language of freedom and justice being used to pursue policies of fear and insecurity. This includes cynical attempts to redefine and sanitise torture,” said Ms Khan. She said the US claimed to be promoting freedom in Iraq,...

Activism/China/Human Rights

February 20, 2009

Kyodo: N. Korea Enriching Uranium at Yongbyon

South Korea and the United States have shared intelligence that North Korea is operating a plant to produce a small amount of highly enriched uranium at its Yongbyon nuclear complex, a Seoul daily reported Wednesday. ”Despite North Korean authorities’ denial of existence of the uranium enrichment program, South Korea and the U.S. share an intelligence North Korea is running a plant for uranium enrichment,” a high-ranking South Korean source reportedly told the Dong-a Ilbo. [Kyodo News] That would certainly help...

Human Rights/Proliferation

February 7, 2009

Unifiction Ministry Reverts to Form

It’s official: the Unifiction Ministry should have been abolished after all: The Ministry of Unification announced Wednesday that it would ask police to investigate anti-Pyongyang activist leaders if they press ahead with their plan to launch propaganda leaflets and North Korean banknotes across the border to the North. A ministry official, along with a representative from police, met with organizers planning to launch the anti-North Korean leaflets, activists said. The two organizers who met the ministry official were Choi Sung-yong,...

Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Famine & Food Aid

February 3, 2009

Happy Birthday, Fat Boy

Activists who send leaflets to North Korea by balloon to denounce its totalitarian government said Monday they plan to include local currency as an incentive to pick up new propaganda to mark the birthday of leader Kim Jong Il. [….] Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon renewed a warning Monday that the activists could face jail or fines if they send North Korea money without government permission. But the activists said they were ready for any punishment, adding leaflets and currency...

Activism/Deprogramming

January 28, 2009

U.N. Special Rapporteur Soldiers On

He was seconded by a fallen government, gets no respect from the U.S. government, and works for the world’s most overrated entity, but Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in North Korea is making (in U.N. terms, at least) a creditable effort to do his job: An independent U.N. investigator on North Korea’s human rights situation Tuesday described the food shortage and rights violations in the country as ”very grim” and called on Japan to strengthen support...

"United" Nations/Abductions/Human Rights

January 27, 2009

‘Kimjongilia,’ The Movie

A new documentary will play at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and this is one that I’m going to be watching very carefully: “Kimjongilia.” The film is about North Korea and those who have escaped it, their tortuous flights, and their often equally tortuous deprogramming as they adapt to life on Earth. The film’s subject matter focus is on the concentration camps, and the astonishment of the Director, N.C. Heikin, that world opinion has not arisen in outrage against them....

Activism/Books & Films/Human Rights/Refugees/The Camps

January 24, 2009

Jay Lefkowitz: Requiem for a Bantamweight

To the limited degree history remembers Jay Lefkowitz at all, it should remember him as a good and well-meaning man who was unequal to the great task laid before him. I have sometimes suspected that this was the very design of those who appointed him. With the change of administrations this week, Lefkowitz departed as Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea, leaving behind a final report that still clings obediently to the myth of constructive engagement with sociopaths:...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Washington Views

January 21, 2009

Megumi Yokota’s Mother’s New Book on Sale

Sakie Yokota’s meeting with President Bush in 2006 may have been one of my last optimistic moments about the GWB administration’s North Korea policy. Mrs. Yokota, whose daughter was kidnapped from the shores of her hometown at the age of 13, has just published an English language edition of her book. I’d be amazed if Mrs. Yokota didn’t express feelings of anger and betrayal toward the former president and his broken promises not to abandon her cause. All of this...

Abductions/Activism

December 16, 2008

WaPo Finally ‘Discovers’ Concentration Camps in North Korea

I submit that any man so morally retarded that he would utter the statement quoted below is not qualified to represent the values or interests of the United States abroad. And South Korea isn’t alone in tuning out the horrors. The United States is more concerned with containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. The State Department’s stunning lack of urgency was captured in a recent statement from its assistant secretary for Asia, Christopher R. Hill: “Each country, including our own, needs...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Media Criticism/Six-Party Talks/The Camps

December 14, 2008

North Korea Imposes Harsher Penalties for Unauthorized Border Crossing

Although I recall hearing someone say recently that human rights would be an important part of the State Department’s negotiations with North Korea, I have yet to see any recent evidence that State’s masters of cerebellingus have applied their techniques to the task of lifting North Korea to a shallower level of hell. Somone had better tell Glyn Davies that a few more adjectives will have to be sacrificed for the cause: North Korea has imposed stiffer punishments on those...

Appeasement/Diplomacy/Human Rights/Refugees

December 7, 2008

Well, that’s just dumb

Activists have decided to suspend those propaganda balloon launches that were actually starting to have a tangible impact on the North Korean military right as they’re doing their winter training exercises. The balloon launches seem to have been pure P.R. brilliance. Instead of moderating their tactics, the activists ought to keep pressing on with more brazen ones. Imagine the effect a shower of these leaflets would have on Kim Jong Il’s birthday parade in February.

Activism/Defectors/Deprogramming

December 5, 2008

Book Review: Escaping North Korea, by Mike Kim

[By Guest Blogger, Dan Bielefeld] A couple months ago I saw something about a new book by a Korean American who had lived in China for four years helping North Koreans. This really caught my attention — I’ve heard of such people but I don’t know a lot about them since most of their work is done in secret. To pique my interest a bit further, he’s from the same part of the country I am (he’s from Chicago, I’m...

Activism/Books & Films/China/Refugees

November 26, 2008

Activists to Resume Leaflet Balloon Campaign

A wave of free publicity, courtesy of the governments of North and South Korea, has made the leaflet balloon campaign has been a great success. Why quit now? Activists for human rights in North Korea on Tuesday vowed to keep sending propaganda leaflets to the North even though the government has asked them to desist. The announcement was made by Park Sang-hak, head of Fighters for Free North Korea and Choi Sung-yong, president of Family Assembly Abducted to North Korea....

Activism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/NK Economics

Category: Human Rights