WP op-ed:Vaclav Havel calls for action re. N Korea human rights

[DeepModem Mom]

Time to Act on N. Korea

By Vaclav Havel
Friday, June 18, 2004; Page A29


....Like the Holocaust, the crimes and brutal reality of Soviet communism were also outlined and understood, thanks to the writings of Arthur Koestler, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others. Fortunately, people who use eyewitness testimony in attempts to expose the greatest crimes against humanity can be found in each era and all over the world. Rithy Panh described the terror of the Khmer Rouge, Kanan Makiya detailed the brutal prisons of Saddam Hussein and Harry Wu has tried to show the perversion of the Laogai system of Chinese forced-labor camps.

Today the testimony of thousands of North Korean refugees who have survived the miserable journey through Communist China to free South Korea tells of the criminal nature of the North Korean dictatorship. Accounts of repression are supported and verified by modern satellite images, and they clearly illustrate that North Korea has a functioning system of concentration camps. The kwan-li-so, or "political penal labor colony," holds as many as 200,000 prisoners who are barely surviving day to day, or are dying in the same conditions as the millions of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system did.

The northern part of the Korean Peninsula is governed by the world's worst totalitarian dictator, a man responsible for the loss of millions of lives. Kim Jong Il inherited the Communist regime following the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, and has continued to strengthen the cult of personality. He sustains one of the largest armies in the world and is producing weapons of mass destruction even as the centrally planned economy and the state ideology -- known as juche, a blend of nationalism and self-reliance -- have led the country into famine. The victims of the North Korean regime number in the millions....

***

Now is the time for the democratic countries of the world -- the European Union, the United States, Japan, South Korea -- to take a common position. They must make it clear that they will not offer concessions to a totalitarian dictator. They must state that respect for basic human rights is an integral part of any future discussions with Pyongyang. Decisiveness, perseverance and negotiations from a position of strength are the only things that Kim Jong Il and those like him understand.


The writer was president of the Czech Republic.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50908-2004Jun17.html

[immune2irony]

1. Oh, kind of like he called for action against Saddam?

No thanks. The man is a warmonger and Bush-lover.

[James T. Kirk]

2. You tell 'em Vaclav!

The government of North Korea sucks! The world should be politically united against such an awful regime.

Havel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaclav_Havel

North Korea propaganda drivel:
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm