Archive for February, 2004
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 24, 2004 at 3:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Today, reports that North Korean refugees had again rushed into the German School in Beijing could mean only one thing–Norbert Vollertsen strikes again, preemptively embarrassing all those (you know who you are, South Korea and China) who sought to cut a deal with Pyongyang and sell the North Korean people out. My suspicions were confirmed in an e-mail a few hours later:
*********
Following the German example of reunification, German institutions in Beijing will be the main target for further operations. We will try to create a diplomatic standoff during the coming days. The North Korean refugees - the 7th party - will talk about human rights.
Maybe Dr. Vollertsen can donate some testosterone or spinal tissue to our State Department.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 24, 2004 at 2:33 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Meanwhile, John Bolton needs no such transplants. When asked recently about how he would end the North Korean nuclear crisis, he held up a copy of “The End of North Korea.” You can hate Bolton’s directness, and you can even say that he’s out of his environment in Foggy Bottom (insert fogginess vs. clarity metaphor here). Bolton sees the North Korean situation for what it is and says so. His recent description of North Korea as “hell on earth” caused a case of apoplexy in Pyongyang. They denounced him as “human scum.” In Seoul, the main diplomatic push has nothing to do with getting North Korea to let inspectors see its gas chambers, concentration camps, mass graves, or nukes. It’s all about letting North Korea save face by clinging to its mendacity about its uranium program. Thus, after fifty years of America protecting the security of South Korea, the safety of post-9/11 America falls one notch below saving Kim Jong-Il’s gargantuan, puffy face in the list of Seoul’s priorities.
The question on our minds–those of us who care about the North Korean people–is, “Will Bush cave?” It’s an election year, and the last thing a sitting president needs is another crisis. But if Bush does cave in exchange for vague promises of freezes and eventual dismantling, he will do more than duck the greatest moral challenge of this decade. It will undermine his advantage of decisiveness and clarity over his Democratic rivals. Thus, those of us hoping for encouragement find it in the fact that Bolton is doing the talking as of late, not James Kelley or Richard Armitage. Of course, it takes a naive mind not to suspect that this is all coordinated and calibrated from the White House. Still, understanding that this is diplomatic SOP, we are encouraged to hear Bolton firmly refuse to let North Korea weasel out of admitting that it had a uranium enrichment program, or even to suggest that if North Korea doesn’t abandon this silly claim, that we might abandon the whole diplomatic charade. How, after all, can we ever put any stock in North Korean assurances, given recent history? Other than stalling us through the election, the only purpose for such a dubious dialogue with such an odious foe is the mistaken assumption that South Korea’s patience to appease the North is exhaustable.
Is it too early to hope that America will finally seek to isolate, subvert, and bring down this evil regime? It means that the threat of force–an essential ingredient in this case–has entered our diplomacy. Moral clarity is still too much to hope for.
Posted by joshua on February 23, 2004 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Today, reports that North Korean refugees had again rushed into the German School in Beijing could mean only one thing–Norbert Vollertsen strikes again, preemptively embarrassing all those (you know who you are, South Korea and China) who sought to cut a deal with Pyongyang and sell the North Korean people out. My suspicions were confirmed in an e-mail a few hours later:
*********
Following the German example of reunification, German institutions in Beijing will be the main target for further operations. We will try to create a diplomatic standoff during the coming days. The North Korean refugees - the 7th party - will talk about human rights.
Maybe Dr. Vollertsen can donate some testosterone or spinal tissue to our State Department.
Posted by joshua on February 23, 2004 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Meanwhile, John Bolton needs no such transplants. When asked recently about how he would end the North Korean nuclear crisis, he held up a copy of “The End of North Korea.” You can hate Bolton’s directness, and you can even say that he’s out of his environment in Foggy Bottom (insert fogginess vs. clarity metaphor here). Bolton sees the North Korean situation for what it is and says so. His recent description of North Korea as “hell on earth” caused a case of apoplexy in Pyongyang. They denounced him as “human scum.” In Seoul, the main diplomatic push has nothing to do with getting North Korea to let inspectors see its gas chambers, concentration camps, mass graves, or nukes. It’s all about letting North Korea save face by clinging to its mendacity about its uranium program. Thus, after fifty years of America protecting the security of South Korea, the safety of post-9/11 America falls one notch below saving Kim Jong-Il’s gargantuan, puffy face in the list of Seoul’s priorities.
The question on our minds–those of us who care about the North Korean people–is, “Will Bush cave?” It’s an election year, and the last thing a sitting president needs is another crisis. But if Bush does cave in exchange for vague promises of freezes and eventual dismantling, he will do more than duck the greatest moral challenge of this decade. It will undermine his advantage of decisiveness and clarity over his Democratic rivals. Thus, those of us hoping for encouragement find it in the fact that Bolton is doing the talking as of late, not James Kelley or Richard Armitage. Of course, it takes a naive mind not to suspect that this is all coordinated and calibrated from the White House. Still, understanding that this is diplomatic SOP, we are encouraged to hear Bolton firmly refuse to let North Korea weasel out of admitting that it had a uranium enrichment program, or even to suggest that if North Korea doesn’t abandon this silly claim, that we might abandon the whole diplomatic charade. How, after all, can we ever put any stock in North Korean assurances, given recent history? Other than stalling us through the election, the only purpose for such a dubious dialogue with such an odious foe is the mistaken assumption that South Korea’s patience to appease the North is exhaustable.
Is it too early to hope that America will finally seek to isolate, subvert, and bring down this evil regime? It means that the threat of force–an essential ingredient in this case–has entered our diplomacy. Moral clarity is still too much to hope for.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 12, 2004 at 2:51 am · Filed under Uncategorized
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.
******************
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.
Posted by joshua on February 11, 2004 at 9:51 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
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.
******************
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.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 10, 2004 at 10:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to do with whether invading Iraq made sense or not. After all, I can count the number of serious advocates of direct military action against North Korea on the fingers of The Fugitive’s right hand; one may indeed be worse, but that doesn’t mean both problems are best solved the same way.
The better question is, what happened to all the urgency about North Korea after the Third Infantry hitched its tow cable to that hollow bronze likeness of Saddam’s neck? The silence of this same crowd today tells us volumes about their insincerity about North Korea. To them, North Korea was nothing more than a logically flawed excuse to do nothing in Iraq (they never actually offered a solution for North Korea, either). Where do we stand today? The Bush administration is stalling until November, not wanting another crisis to deal with now. As Taranto points out, Kerry advocates more of the same process of negotiation and appeasement that got us into the present mess in the first place. Nobody on either side is talking about the urgent humanitarian crisis. Whose interests, after all, does it serve to talk about that? North Koreans don’t vote, after all. Still, I believe that Bush really “loathes” Kim Jong-Il, like he said in Bush at War, and that there’s just a chance that he’ll deal with him if he’s elected. I can’t say that about any of the Dems still running.
The greatest irony of all is the composition of the coalition building against Kim Jong-Il–classic liberals and hard-line neocons. What other issue could build a friendship between Chris Beaumont and someone like myself, considering that we agree on almost nothing else? Above all, it is those who put principle over expediency and self-interest on both extremes of the political spectrum who are telling it like it is on North Korea. Don’t believe me? Exhibit A, on the neocons, is Taranto and the WSJ (and Claudia Rosett, and Anne Applebaum, and the Hudson Institute . . . ). I now present Exhibit B–this astonishing must-read editorial from the Boston Globe today, which sits neatly on top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with its liberal Museum of Tolerance of South Park fame, and yes, Ted Kennedy, giving this issue the attention it deserves. Those who don’t care about North Korea generally follow the moral equivalency/relativist line of thought (Kerry, Dean, The Brookings Institute–may Allah inflict a thousand floggings upon them) or the self-interested/isolationist line of thought (The Entire State Department Except John Bolton, Kissinger, Bush the Elder).
I’ve been e-mailing Taranto a lot lately, and he’s printed my name a few times, including yesterday. In my e-mail yesterday, I sent him several links on the gas chamber story, but he chose today to discuss it. Still, I’d like to take some credit for getting him thinking about this issue (a thousand pardons for the plug; hope it illustrates how us ordinary folk can influence the mighty!).
Posted by joshua on February 10, 2004 at 5:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to do with whether invading Iraq made sense or not. After all, I can count the number of serious advocates of direct military action against North Korea on the fingers of The Fugitive’s right hand; one may indeed be worse, but that doesn’t mean both problems are best solved the same way.
The better question is, what happened to all the urgency about North Korea after the Third Infantry hitched its tow cable to that hollow bronze likeness of Saddam’s neck? The silence of this same crowd today tells us volumes about their insincerity about North Korea. To them, North Korea was nothing more than a logically flawed excuse to do nothing in Iraq (they never actually offered a solution for North Korea, either). Where do we stand today? The Bush administration is stalling until November, not wanting another crisis to deal with now. As Taranto points out, Kerry advocates more of the same process of negotiation and appeasement that got us into the present mess in the first place. Nobody on either side is talking about the urgent humanitarian crisis. Whose interests, after all, does it serve to talk about that? North Koreans don’t vote, after all. Still, I believe that Bush really “loathes” Kim Jong-Il, like he said in Bush at War, and that there’s just a chance that he’ll deal with him if he’s elected. I can’t say that about any of the Dems still running.
The greatest irony of all is the composition of the coalition building against Kim Jong-Il–classic liberals and hard-line neocons. What other issue could build a friendship between Chris Beaumont and someone like myself, considering that we agree on almost nothing else? Above all, it is those who put principle over expediency and self-interest on both extremes of the political spectrum who are telling it like it is on North Korea. Don’t believe me? Exhibit A, on the neocons, is Taranto and the WSJ (and Claudia Rosett, and Anne Applebaum, and the Hudson Institute . . . ). I now present Exhibit B–this astonishing must-read editorial from the Boston Globe today, which sits neatly on top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with its liberal Museum of Tolerance of South Park fame, and yes, Ted Kennedy, giving this issue the attention it deserves. Those who don’t care about North Korea generally follow the moral equivalency/relativist line of thought (Kerry, Dean, The Brookings Institute–may Allah inflict a thousand floggings upon them) or the self-interested/isolationist line of thought (The Entire State Department Except John Bolton, Kissinger, Bush the Elder).
I’ve been e-mailing Taranto a lot lately, and he’s printed my name a few times, including yesterday. In my e-mail yesterday, I sent him several links on the gas chamber story, but he chose today to discuss it. Still, I’d like to take some credit for getting him thinking about this issue (a thousand pardons for the plug; hope it illustrates how us ordinary folk can influence the mighty!).
Posted by joshua on February 10, 2004 at 5:22 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
James Taranto, my favorite blogger, writes “Best of the Web” on the Wall Street Journal’s online op-ed page. Today, he brilliantly played back the words of the North-Korea-is-worse-than-Iraq crowd of a year ago, in the context of the new gas chamber revelations (it starts about two-thirds of the way down the column). As you may recall, one of the arguments proferred against the war in Iraq was that North Korea was worse. One has to question what this has to do with whether invading Iraq made sense or not. After all, I can count the number of serious advocates of direct military action against North Korea on the fingers of The Fugitive’s right hand; one may indeed be worse, but that doesn’t mean both problems are best solved the same way.
The better question is, what happened to all the urgency about North Korea after the Third Infantry hitched its tow cable to that hollow bronze likeness of Saddam’s neck? The silence of this same crowd today tells us volumes about their insincerity about North Korea. To them, North Korea was nothing more than a logically flawed excuse to do nothing in Iraq (they never actually offered a solution for North Korea, either). Where do we stand today? The Bush administration is stalling until November, not wanting another crisis to deal with now. As Taranto points out, Kerry advocates more of the same process of negotiation and appeasement that got us into the present mess in the first place. Nobody on either side is talking about the urgent humanitarian crisis. Whose interests, after all, does it serve to talk about that? North Koreans don’t vote, after all. Still, I believe that Bush really “loathes” Kim Jong-Il, like he said in Bush at War, and that there’s just a chance that he’ll deal with him if he’s elected. I can’t say that about any of the Dems still running.
The greatest irony of all is the composition of the coalition building against Kim Jong-Il–classic liberals and hard-line neocons. What other issue could build a friendship between Chris Beaumont and someone like myself, considering that we agree on almost nothing else? Above all, it is those who put principle over expediency and self-interest on both extremes of the political spectrum who are telling it like it is on North Korea. Don’t believe me? Exhibit A, on the neocons, is Taranto and the WSJ (and Claudia Rosett, and Anne Applebaum, and the Hudson Institute . . . ). I now present Exhibit B–this astonishing must-read editorial from the Boston Globe today, which sits neatly on top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, with its liberal Museum of Tolerance of South Park fame, and yes, Ted Kennedy, giving this issue the attention it deserves. Those who don’t care about North Korea generally follow the moral equivalency/relativist line of thought (Kerry, Dean, The Brookings Institute–may Allah inflict a thousand floggings upon them) or the self-interested/isolationist line of thought (The Entire State Department Except John Bolton, Kissinger, Bush the Elder).
I’ve been e-mailing Taranto a lot lately, and he’s printed my name a few times, including yesterday. In my e-mail yesterday, I sent him several links on the gas chamber story, but he chose today to discuss it. Still, I’d like to take some credit for getting him thinking about this issue (a thousand pardons for the plug; hope it illustrates how us ordinary folk can influence the mighty!).
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 6, 2004 at 11:38 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Dear Sir or Madam,
Permit me to be blunt. A growing majority of the people of my country, the United States of America, believes that the United Nations has no values, no standards, no decisiveness, and a soft, cowardly paralysis in the face of every crisis that rightfully demands action. Preventing another Holocaust was the reason the U.N. was created, but nearly sixty years later, the U.N. lacks the will to act against crimes of comparable horror and scale. As you know, a significant portion of the U.N.’s funds come from the U.S. government, which by law reflects the changing priorities of the American people.
The situation in North Korea today is an excellent illustration of U.N. cowardice and inaction; it calls the justifications for the U.N.’s existence into question. Three days ago, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to
the Secretary General and directed his attention to press reports in the BBC and The Observer (UK) that North Korea places entire families in gas chambers, forces them to strip naked, and gasses them to death in the course of “scientific experiments.” It also informed you of North Korea’s use of poisoned food to inflict hideous, painful deaths on scores of female prisoners. The Wiesenthal Center asked the Secretary General to fully investigate of these allegations. The Yad Vashem Memorial has since joined in these calls. A thorough search of your Web site reveals that the U.N. has had absolutely no reaction to this urgent request.
Recently, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released a report stating that 200,000 North Koreans are kept in horrific conditions in concentration camps, where many of them are executed, deprived of adequate food and medical care, and forced to perform slave labor. Tens of thousands of them die each year. Press reports and testimony in the U.S. Congress tell us that North Korean concentration camp guards routinely murder babies born to female prisoners, by lethal injection, by stomping on their necks, or by leaving them outside to die of exposure. Amnesty International has recently added new light to he “famine” in North Korea, which has killed up to three million people in the last decade. A new Amnesty report accuses the North Korean government of using food as a weapon against those whose political loyalty it distrusts by selectively denying them food rations. A genocide is happening today, and the U.N. dithers. Dithering is a choice the U.N. may make; opposing the funding of this dithering is a choice that you can expect increasing numbers of Americans to make in response.
This fall, as I ponder the question of which candidates I will support, I will carefully consider how the U.N. responds to these latest reports. As the candidates discuss the competing and urgent wartime priorities for U.S. taxpayer funding, I will strain to understand how the U.N. has earned a share. I will try again to discern an effective U.N. response to ANY the great humanitarian disasters of the last decade–Iraq, Rwanda, the rule of Saddam Hussein and its 300,000 victims, North Korea, or the suffering and exploitation of hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees hiding in China and denied their rights under international law there. On only one of these issues–Iraq–was it possible to discern that the United Nations had a position. That position, regrettably, was to oppose any effective action against a regime that had defied eighteen of its resolutions. Today, the U.N. timidly averts its eyes from what may well be a new Asian Auschwitz. It cannot even summon the courage to speak empty but sympathetic words for those who may be breathing their last painful gasps on cold, bloody cement floors, beside the bodies of their murdered children.
Shame on the United Nations. I will strongly urge my elected representatives to give your cowardly organization the nothing it has justly earned.
Posted by joshua on February 6, 2004 at 6:38 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Dear Sir or Madam,
Permit me to be blunt. A growing majority of the people of my country, the United States of America, believes that the United Nations has no values, no standards, no decisiveness, and a soft, cowardly paralysis in the face of every crisis that rightfully demands action. Preventing another Holocaust was the reason the U.N. was created, but nearly sixty years later, the U.N. lacks the will to act against crimes of comparable horror and scale. As you know, a significant portion of the U.N.’s funds come from the U.S. government, which by law reflects the changing priorities of the American people.
The situation in North Korea today is an excellent illustration of U.N. cowardice and inaction; it calls the justifications for the U.N.’s existence into question. Three days ago, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to
the Secretary General and directed his attention to press reports in the BBC and The Observer (UK) that North Korea places entire families in gas chambers, forces them to strip naked, and gasses them to death in the course of “scientific experiments.” It also informed you of North Korea’s use of poisoned food to inflict hideous, painful deaths on scores of female prisoners. The Wiesenthal Center asked the Secretary General to fully investigate of these allegations. The Yad Vashem Memorial has since joined in these calls. A thorough search of your Web site reveals that the U.N. has had absolutely no reaction to this urgent request.
Recently, the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea released a report stating that 200,000 North Koreans are kept in horrific conditions in concentration camps, where many of them are executed, deprived of adequate food and medical care, and forced to perform slave labor. Tens of thousands of them die each year. Press reports and testimony in the U.S. Congress tell us that North Korean concentration camp guards routinely murder babies born to female prisoners, by lethal injection, by stomping on their necks, or by leaving them outside to die of exposure. Amnesty International has recently added new light to he “famine” in North Korea, which has killed up to three million people in the last decade. A new Amnesty report accuses the North Korean government of using food as a weapon against those whose political loyalty it distrusts by selectively denying them food rations. A genocide is happening today, and the U.N. dithers. Dithering is a choice the U.N. may make; opposing the funding of this dithering is a choice that you can expect increasing numbers of Americans to make in response.
This fall, as I ponder the question of which candidates I will support, I will carefully consider how the U.N. responds to these latest reports. As the candidates discuss the competing and urgent wartime priorities for U.S. taxpayer funding, I will strain to understand how the U.N. has earned a share. I will try again to discern an effective U.N. response to ANY the great humanitarian disasters of the last decade–Iraq, Rwanda, the rule of Saddam Hussein and its 300,000 victims, North Korea, or the suffering and exploitation of hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees hiding in China and denied their rights under international law there. On only one of these issues–Iraq–was it possible to discern that the United Nations had a position. That position, regrettably, was to oppose any effective action against a regime that had defied eighteen of its resolutions. Today, the U.N. timidly averts its eyes from what may well be a new Asian Auschwitz. It cannot even summon the courage to speak empty but sympathetic words for those who may be breathing their last painful gasps on cold, bloody cement floors, beside the bodies of their murdered children.
Shame on the United Nations. I will strongly urge my elected representatives to give your cowardly organization the nothing it has justly earned.
Posted by Joshua Stanton on February 4, 2004 at 11:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Anne Appelbaum gets it exactly right in today’s WP. Whether the allegations are true or not, they are extremely serious, and are backed by enough credible evidence for them to be a major news story. If there are doubts about the truth of these reports, then let the North Koreans resolve them immediately by letting human rights organizations have full and open access to Camp 22. Barring that, the allegations gain additional credibility.
Of course, it is not news that North Korea practices unlimited cruelty in its concentration camps. The sadder surprise is the fact that the media and the chattering classes are still spilling more ink over Guantanamo than Camp 22. You may feel that three nutritious meals a day, sanitary living conditions, the free exercise of the religion of your choice, and modern health care constitute oppressive conditions without the presence of Mark Gerregos handing out business cards. You cannot make the case that those relatively soft conditions, endured by a dangerous few, are more newsworthy than a Holocaust Now, endured (at least until the last breath) by millions.
Shame on South Korea for immediately questioning the story without asking North Korea to do anything to disprove it. Is there no depth to which Roh and his appeasers will NOT stoop to sell their souls to evil? Similiarly, kudos to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem for demanding that the U.N. fully investigate. Of course, asking the U.N. to make a moral judgment or draw and obvious conclusion asks a lot.
Incidentally, I also highly recommend Anne Appelbaum’s recent book, Gulag: A History.
Posted by joshua on February 4, 2004 at 6:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Anne Appelbaum gets it exactly right in today’s WP. Whether the allegations are true or not, they are extremely serious, and are backed by enough credible evidence for them to be a major news story. If there are doubts about the truth of these reports, then let the North Koreans resolve them immediately by letting human rights organizations have full and open access to Camp 22. Barring that, the allegations gain additional credibility.
Of course, it is not news that North Korea practices unlimited cruelty in its concentration camps. The sadder surprise is the fact that the media and the chattering classes are still spilling more ink over Guantanamo than Camp 22. You may feel that three nutritious meals a day, sanitary living conditions, the free exercise of the religion of your choice, and modern health care constitute oppressive conditions without the presence of Mark Gerregos handing out business cards. You cannot make the case that those relatively soft conditions, endured by a dangerous few, are more newsworthy than a Holocaust Now, endured (at least until the last breath) by millions.
Shame on South Korea for immediately questioning the story without asking North Korea to do anything to disprove it. Is there no depth to which Roh and his appeasers will NOT stoop to sell their souls to evil? Similiarly, kudos to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Yad Vashem for demanding that the U.N. fully investigate. Of course, asking the U.N. to make a moral judgment or draw and obvious conclusion asks a lot.
Incidentally, I also highly recommend Anne Appelbaum’s recent book, Gulag: A History.