Human Rights – Page 20

March 13, 2008

China Arrests 5 N.K. Refugees; Protest in Seoul This Friday

I’ve been receiving e-mails from a number of NGO’s about this incident, although I haven’t seen published reports about it. I’ll reprint the letter from the North Korean Freedom Coalition in full below. The protest will take place this Friday, March 14, at 10 a.m., in front of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, near Exit No. 3 of Gyeongbokgung Station, subway Line No. 3. The group organizing the protest is called Christian Assembly. I haven’t heard of this group previously,...

Activism/China & Korea/Refugees

March 12, 2008

State Department’s Annual Human Rights Report Released

The State Department’s 2007 annual human rights country reports were released yesterday. Recall that a Washington Post columnist recently printed some leaked e-mails in which Glyn Davies of the State Department’s odious Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (EAP) had tried to lean on the authors of the report to “sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause.” Words to have been eliminated are in brackets, those to have been added are in italics: “The [repressive] North Korean government[regime] continued...

Appeasement/Human Rights

March 9, 2008

N. Korean Freedom Coalition Writes to Lee Myung Bak, Demands Inquiry into Massacre of 22 Refugees

If you haven’t heard of this yet, the background is here, here, and here. Now, the North Korean Freedom Coalition has written to South Korea’s new President to ask him to look into why this happened. I should say that I had nothing to do with the writing of their excellent letter. Not to be confused with this more recent massacre, in case you’re keeping track. If you’d like to join or contribute to the North Korean Freedom Coalition —...

Activism/Human Rights

March 8, 2008

Hill: Gas Chambers, Concentration Camps, and Refugee Massacres No Impediment to Full Diplomatic Relations After All

Last February, just after Chris Hill rolled out that landmark achievement called Agreed Framework 2.0 — how is that working out, by the way? — he went to Congress to defend his amorphous cloud of ether against some obvious questions about how the North Koreans might interpret it and what laws the agreement might actually break in its application. You mentioned certain laws of ours that reflect human rights issues and humanitarian law. I can assure you that any agreement...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Six-Party Talks

March 7, 2008

State Dep’t Airbrushes Its N. Korea Human Rights Report

Back during law school, I took the Foreign Service exam, passed on the first try, and interviewed for a job in the State Department. Today, I’d be less ashamed if I’d auditioned for La Cage Aux Folles, so this isn’t easy for me to admit. I flew all the way down to Dallas for the interview phase, only to come face-to-face with a bunch of pony-tailed hippies in suits. If there’s one thing I cannot pretend not to despise, it’s...

Appeasement/Human Rights

February 27, 2008

Shafted: Winners, Losers, and Casualties of the North Korean Mines

As the North Korean regime struggles to sustain an already marginal economy that actually shrank in 2006, it is accelerating its sell-off of its mineral resources. Again, China appears to be the main buyer, again, corruption is throttling the state’s earning potential. As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government...

China & Korea/Human Rights/NK Economics

February 24, 2008

The Olympics, China, and N. Korean Refugees

Update: Another call to boycott the Beijing Olympics: Pro-democracy activists in Myanmar called Monday for the world to boycott this year’s Beijing Olympics over what they said was China’s continuing support of Myanmar’s military dictatorship. The 88 Generation Students group, which was instrumental in last year’s pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar, urged “citizens around the world … to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics in response to China’s bankrolling of the military junta that rules our country of Burma with guns and...

Activism/Refugees

February 21, 2008

ChiComs Pissed at Spielberg

[Update: Hey, maybe the Chinese should hire this guy!] The nerve of the guy — objecting to China’s sovereign right to abet genocide. Why must people sully the Olympic spirit this way? What does hat say about their priorities? “A certain Western director was very naive and made an unreasonable move toward the issue of the Beijing Olympics. This is perhaps because of his unique Hollywood characteristics,” it said. Over the weekend, the Guangming Daily, also published by the Communist...

China/Human Rights

February 21, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel, Part 2

Lorin Maazel could really use a publicist who understands the concept of “stop digging.” Just when we thought we’d put this flame war behind us, he goes off again, in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page. With time for further reflection and careful editing, here’s how he rephrases his central point: If we are to be effective in bringing succor to the oppressed, many languishing in foreign gulags, the U.S. must claim an authority based on an immaculate ethical record,...

Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Deprogramming/Human Rights/WTF?

February 20, 2008

Updates on the 22 Executed North Koreans

Original post here. – Via the Joongang Ilbo, the South Korean NIS claims that they found oysters in the two boats, and that they notified President-Elect Lee’s transition team of the impending repatriation. (Note that various descriptions of the boats continue to be wildly inconsistent — fishing boats? rubber rafts? powered or unpowered?). – Via the Chosun Ilbo, outraged North Korean refugees are finding their voice, and giving us some factual context: The [Committee for Democratization of North Korea] slammed...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Refugees

February 19, 2008

It’s an Honor Just to Be Nominated

Parade Magazine has named Kim Jong Il the world’s worst dictator for 2008, edging out the butchers in charge of Sudan and Burma. Which is quite a distinction. Kim Jong-il runs the most isolated, repressive regime in the world. His citizens have no access to information other than government propaganda. His harsh system includes collective punishment (three generations of a family can be punished for one member’s alleged crime); detainment of roughly 200,000 citizens in labor camps; and the capture,...

Human Rights

February 17, 2008

Yonhap: N. Korea Executes 22 Who “Drifted” into S. Korean Waters

Public execution in Hoeryong, North Korea, 2005 Just one week remains in leftist President Roh Moo Hyun’s disgraceful term of office, yet his Sunshine Policy is still killing North Koreans. That policy was generous to the man who lives in this palace, but for the rest of North Korea’s people, it has always meant “die in place” and “you are not welcome.” And while there’s much we still don’t know about this incident, I didn’t believe the official story from...

Appeasement/Human Rights/Refugees

February 8, 2008

The Morally Retarded Lorin Maazel

I’ve already said that I’m ambivalent about the visit of the New York Philharmonic to North Korea. They will play some good music, which will probably do little harm and little good. If we would just accept the music on its face value without injecting politics into it, this visit wouldn’t be taking on such a pernicious odor. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. Spurred on by the mendacious appeaser Christopher Hill, the Philharmonic now imagines itself as an...

Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Human Rights/WTF?

February 8, 2008

Christopher Hitchens on the Rice-Lefkowitz Flap

Since Hitchens may have had something to do with goading Lefkowitz into making his original comments, I’ve been wondering how he would react to what resulted. I like to imagine that my little essay stung Lefkowitz a bit. At any event, he got up on his hind legs at the American Enterprise Institute in the third week of January and made an explicit criticism of the Bush administration that he serves. The State Department’s insistence on “diplomacy,” he argued, had...

Appeasement/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

February 3, 2008

Advantage, Lefkowitz?

The latest Bush Administration official to return from Pyongyang empty-handed is Sung Kim, who spent three days in Pyongyang and got no nuclear declaration for his trouble. It’s a well known fact of diplomacy that even when no translation is necessary, it can take 72 hours to comprehend the utterance of the word “no. The latest Bush Administration alumnus to denounce its failing last-ditch appeasement of North Korea is former speechwriter Michael Gerson, who writes in the Washington Post about...

Diplomacy/Human Rights/U.S. Politics

January 23, 2008

Classless Condi

[Update: Miss that warm, moist pungence rising around your ankles? Here’s your fix for that: “I’m going to have a great deal more to say about elevating the issue of human rights in North Korea, which is clearly a priority for the president and Congress,” he said. [N.Y. Times, Helene Cooper] Exactly how stupid do these people think we are? Condi Rice has scarcely uttered a word about this in four years, has prevented anyone else but the marginalized...

Diplomacy/Human Rights/Washington Views

January 4, 2008

Anti-Slavery International: ‘Forced Labor in North Korean Prison Camps’

[Update: Kathreb responds here, but VanMidd comes the closest to the truth: “[A]ll us lefties are scoob smoking hippies on welfare ….” Good on you for admitting it, and I’d gladly return the favor by recommending a decent barber and springing for bus fare to the day labor center or the nearest Home Depot. It’s going to be a long road, VanMidd, but we’ll be here for you when you decide to take that first step.] Over at...