URGENT NK Human Rights Act Update

The Chosun Ilbo is reporting that Congress will vote on the North Korean Human Rights Act this week. No, this bill is not as strong as the original North Korean Freedom Act, but great things have small beginnings, and a strong response from voters can help build toward better things later.

In brief, this bill does the following:

1. Increases funds to broadcast to North Korea for more hours every day, and to find ways to get tunable radios to the North Korean people (North Korean radios are “fixed” so that they can only be tuned to the government propaganda stations);

2. Puts pressure on China to treat North Korean refugees humanely, rather than sending them back to gulags in North Korea;

3. Puts pressure on the U.N.H.C.R. to do its job and protect those refugees, a task at which it has thus far failed miserably;

4. Requires our government to make human rights a primary topic in our negotiations with North Korea;

5. Allows North Korean refugees asylum in the United States when South Korea refuses it, thereby shaming South Korea into doing something more constructive than denying that the problem exists;

6. Prohibits aid to North Korea unless we can monitor its distribution to those in greatest need (in the past, aid was diverted to the military);

7. Hopefully, gets this issue a fraction of the media exposure it deserves.

You can find your representatives here and your senators here. Write your own letter or copy and paste the sample below into your reps’ web forms. I included the source material for the “too terrible to be true” types, but split it off onto a separate page to keep you from exceeding the Web form word limits, or in case you choose to send by snail mail.

Thank you in advance. Sample follows:

If you had served in Congress in 1939, what would you have done to try to prevent the Holocaust? This week, you will face a choice of similar moral impact when Congress considers the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004. I urge you to vote in favor of this legislation.

The human rights situation in North Korea is the greatest moral challenge the world faces today. Since 1994, an estimated two million North Koreans have starved to death, even as members of the ruling elite eat imported delicacies, drive expensive imported cars, talk on cell phones, and spend a third of the nationï¿½s budget on arms. A recent report by Amnesty International tells us that North Korea uses its state food distribution system to discriminate against families it considers potentially disloyal, a policy which undoubtedly killed many of the famine victims. North Korea has also blocked aid organizations from distributing food directly to those in greatest need, and has diverted food aid from the hungry to the military. All of this suggests a degree of criminal intent behind these millions of ï¿½famineï¿½ deaths.

The NKHRA will advance, rather than hinder, the cause of a nuclear-free North Korea. Those who see raising the issue of human rights as an impediment to controlling North Koreaï¿½s WMD ambitions speak as if those issues can be separated. In fact, they are deeply intertwined. There are credible reports that North Korea uses political prisoners as guinea pigs in its WMD testing. According to one report, documented in testimony before the United States Senate, North Korean concentration camp guards killed fifty female prisoners in one hour by feeding them poised cabbage. Others took notes as these women died slow, agonizing deaths. A recent BBC documentary, Access to Evil, reported that at a prison known as Camp 51, ï¿½scientistsï¿½ use a gas chamber to test chemical weapons on whole families. They reportedly watch the victims through a window as the dying parents try vainly to resuscitate their children. The United States suspects that many of North Koreaï¿½s prohibited nuclear facilities are hidden underground. Many, if not most, of North Koreaï¿½s underground facilities were built with forced labor, as a recent LA Times story tells us.

Given the linkage between North Koreaï¿½s banned weapons and its human rights abuses, and its secrecy regarding both, can we trust North Korea to make a full disclosure of its WMD programs without transparency on human rights issues? Can we have any faith that a regime that keeps more than 10% of its population in concentration camps will be more open and honest about its uses for such a massive system of slave labor? A vote for the North Korean Human Rights Act says that there can be no deal without a fundamental new openness in North Korea. It is a vote against accepting the false security of lies–lies that cover the shallow graves of millions. It tells the North Korean regime that mass repression comes with a high price. Finally, it is a vote against the moral irresponsibility of aiding or appeasing a regime that has already killed millions through a combination of neglect and murder. For all of these reasons, I urge you to vote in favor of the North Korean Human Rights Act.

Source Material:

DAVID HAWK, U.S. COMMITTEE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN NORTH KOREA, THE HIDDEN GULAG (2003), available at http://www.hrnk.org/TheHiddenGulag-press.pdf (size and scope of the forced labor system).

Barbara Demick, Thousands of North Korean Tunnels Hide Arms Secrets, L.A. TIMES, Nov. 15, 2003, available at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2001791947_koreacaves140.html (use of underground facilities, use of forced labor to build them).

Antony Barnett, Revealed: The Gas Chamber Horror of North Koreaï¿½s Gulag, The Guardian, Feb. 1, 2004, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/korea/article/0%2C2763%2C1136483%2C00.html.

Anne Appelbaum, Auschwitz Under Our Noses, WASH. POST, Feb. 4, 2004, at A23, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10791-2004Feb3?language=printer.

Robert Windrem, Death, Terror in N. Korean Gulag, MSNBCNEWS.COM, Jan. 15, 2003, at http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3071466.

BBC News Online, N. Korea ï¿½Kills Detaineesï¿½ Babies,ï¿½ Oct. 22, 2003, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3204509.stm.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL, STARVED OF RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE FOOD CRISIS IN THE PEOPLESï¿½ DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF KOREA (NORTH KOREA), Jan. 17, 2004, available at http://www.news.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA240032004?open&of=ENG-2S2 (denial of food to families the state considers ï¿½waveringï¿½ or ï¿½hostileï¿½)

CNN.com, Famine May Have Killed 2 Million in North Korea, Aug. 19, 1998, available at http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9808/19/nkorea.famine/ (note the date of this article).

BBC News Online, Aid Agency Says N. Koreans Starve, Apr. 11, 1998, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/world/asia-pacific/77223.stm (denial of international aid to refugees, diversion to the military).

Medicins Sans Frontieres, MSF in North Korea (Jan. 9, 2004), at http://www.msf.org/countries/index.cfm?indexid=22D113E8-BEC7-11D4-852200902789187E (MSFï¿½s pullout from North Korea due to the regimeï¿½s lack of transparency and diversion of aid to the military, numerous links to media reports and testimony before Congress).

Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, Famine, Nuclear Threat Raise Stakes in Debate Over N. Korea, WASH. POST, Mar. 13, 1999, at A1, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/korea/stories/famine031399.htm (North Korean involvement in smuggling, illegal drugs, counterfeiting; inequality between favored and disfavored classes).

BBC News Online, Pizza for the Dear Leader, Apr. 27, 2001, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1300512.stm (the elites live in luxury as millions starve).

Donald MacIntyre, The Supremo in His Labyrinth, TIME ASIA, Feb. 18, 2002, available at http://www.time.com/time/asia/news/magazine/0,9754,201976,00.html (luxuries enjoyed by the North Korean elite include ï¿½pleasure squads,ï¿½ karaoke parlors, and a special swimming pool with a wave machine).

0Shares