Please join me in trying the save the life of the man who revealed the proof of the gas chambers
Dear readers,
Today this site, still in its infancy, had the highest one-day readership so far. Those are not Andrew Sullivan numbers, to be sure, but great things have small beginnings, particularly in the context of all of the fine sites out there talking about this issue (freenorthkorea.net and chosunjournal.com in particular).* Please feel free to purloin, modify, and make use of the following sample letter to Congress. Just make sure you send it! Time is of the essence. This is the only way I see to save the life of the unnamed informant who was just arrested in China–the brave man who risked his life to steal North Korean gas chamber “transfer orders” to show them to all of us. Many others will eventually owe their lives to this man. Please take just a moment to help him. And while we’re at it, let’s toss in a plug for Takayuki Noguchi and the North Korean Freedom Act.
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Dear Senator ,
I am deeply concerned about recent reports from North Korea that rival the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust sixty years ago. The most recent reports claim that North Korea is using gas chambers to kill entire families–including children–to test chemical weapons. This is only the latest of many reports that North Korea kills prisoners, often in large groups, by testing poisons on them. Defectors also tell us that North Korea kills Christians by pouring molten iron over them, and kills the babies of refugees returned forcibly from China by giving them lethal injections, stomping on their necks, smothing them in front of their mothers, or leaving them in open boxes outdoors to die of exposure. The reason for this killing? Babies of mothers returned from China are presumed to be half Chinese, and thus raciall impure.
Our best estimates are that North Korea keeps approximately 200,000 people in concentration camps. Most prisoners are sent to these camps simply because they are related to suspected political criminals or religious believers. Amnesty International recently accused North Korea of pursuing a policy of targeted starvation to eliminate “class enemies.” The North Korean famine, which may well be a deliberate policy of political cleansing, has killed approximately two million people during the last decade.
Today, I read that China has arrested an unnamed North Korean defector who passed incriminating documents about North Korea’s gas chambers to British journalists. Thus far, according to human rights activists, U.S. diplomatic personnel have refused to intervene to help this man, who faces certain death if returned to North Korea. China routinely repatriates North Korean refugees, in violation of the 1951 U.N. Convention on Refugees. It also arrests humanitarian workers in China who try to help North Korean refugees, often on fabricated charges. China is holding a number of these activists in prison, including American citizen Seok Jae-Hyun, and Takayuki Noguchi, a Japanese national arrested just over a week ago. Sen. Richard Lugar recently wrote of his concern about China’s repatriation policy in an op-ed in the Washington Post.
I urge you to join Sen. Lugar in demanding that the Chinese government meet its obligations under international law and give asylum to North Korean refugees. Urgent intervention is required in the case of the North Korean informant who faces deportation today. I also ask you to urge President Bush to make human rights an issue in any talks with North Korea. The United States cannot trust a nation that maintains a secret system of death camps to be open and truthful about its weapons programs. Because the camps are used as a testing ground for weapons of mass destruction, the issue of weapons is inseparable from that of human rights. Finally, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to support the North Korean Freedom Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Kyl, Brownback, and Kennedy, and now pending Senate action.
As we have learned from history, a regime that pursues the mass murder of its own people cannot be trusted and should not be perpetuated. North Korea must release the prisoners from its gulag, or the United States must lead the world in isolating North Korea’s fragile economy, and in broadcasting the truth to its people through outlets like Radio Free Asia. If the North Korean government insists on committing genocide, then our policy must be to change that regime. North Korea denies, but refuses to refute the lastest allegations; it could easily do so by permitting inspectors to visit these camps immediately.
For further information about the situation in North Korea and links to press reports, publications, and testimony supporting the facts I claim in this letter, please see www.onefreekorea.net. Thank you.
Respectfully,
Links to the house and senate Web sites.
* If there’s anything more contradictory than a gay British conservative advocate of Pax Americana, it’s a conservative Republican Jew from South Dakota. I guess someone has to identify with Kyle Broflovski. That would be Andrew and me, and in that order.