Europe, Japan Condemns North Korea for Human Rights Violations
North Korea was condemned by the European Parliament and Japan recently with both bodies passing resolutions to add pressure to the communist state.
North Korea, known for its severe human rights and religious freedom violations, was condemned by the European Parliament and Japan recently with both bodies passing resolutions to add pressure to the communist state.
The first human rights Urgency Resolution on North Korea was adopted by a large majority of the European Parliament on Thursday. The text of the resolution was agreed by all parties, including the communist group.
“We greatly welcome this important step by the European Parliament, expressing grave concern over the widespread and gross violations of human rights in North Korea,” Christian Solidarity Worldwide International Advocate Elizabeth Batha said in a statement released on Thursday.
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“The resolution demonstrates the increased resolve in Europe and the international community to address this situation, considered by many to be the most serious human rights concern in the world today. This momentum is set to build until change occurs in North Korea. We hope that the North Korean authorities will take this message to heart and start attacking the problem rather than those who articulate it.”
The resolution highlights the severe human rights violations faced by North Koreans including torture in prison camps, use of the death penalty, repression of religious freedom, and severe restrictions on freedom of information in the closed state.
Also, on Friday, Japan’s parliament enacted a bill that would impose sanction on North Korea if it fails to cooperate in providing information on past abduction of Japanese citizens. The legislation would authorize the government to ban the docking of North Korean ships in Japanese ports and stop the private transfer of “hard cash” from Japan to the communist state, reported The Associated Press.
The legislation is part of the increasing pressure on North Korea by Japan to solve a series of abductions in the 1970s and 80s including the well-known case of Megumi Yokota – a 13-year-old school girl abducted in 1977. Her mother, who turned to Christ after her daughter’s abduction, as well as her father have been actively searching and advocating for the investigation of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens after nearly 30 years of search for their daughter.
Yet while the world increasingly criticizes and pressures North Korea for human rights violations and other illegal activities, the South Korean government has continued to avoid condemning its Northern counterpart and, as a result, has received criticism itself for its “Sunshine Policy” – the current South Korean doctrine towards North Korea that emphasizes peaceful cooperation, seeking short-term reconciliation as a prelude to eventual Korean reunification.
Under the policy, South Korea offers appeasements such as food aid to the North in hopes of achieving peace on the Korean Peninsula, but critics say the policy supports Kim Jong Il’s regime by providing food for the high officials while the starving North Korean citizens, whom the food is intended to reach, never receive any of it.
“It is not really sunshine; it is sunshine on the dictator, not on the people,” commented Vice Chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, Sin U Nam, earlier this year.
Amid the criticisms, the relationship between South and North Korea has increasing warmed as the two countries focus on reconciliation of the Korean peninsula.
For instance, on April 26, 2006, a 61-membered delegation of South Korean Roman Catholics visited the North as the first such official delegation to visit a country that the U.S. has criticized for suppressing religion.
Furthermore, as part of the commemoration of the sixth anniversary of the 2000 summit between North and South Korean leaders – the only such meeting since the 1950-53 Korean War – classrooms in North and South Korea are teaching students the importance of reunification of the peninsula, according to reports. Students in the South are taught to embrace their communist neighbors.
"Unless we block interruptions by other countries that tell us to do this and that, how can we make ourselves into one country?" asked the narrator of a movie shown in one class, using terms similar to rhetoric commonly employed by the communist North to condemn U.S. influence in South Korea, AP reported.
Critics of the class, however, argue that the program fails to address the realities in North Korea under the Kim Jong Il regime.
"The classes are seriously distorting the facts by not mentioning at all about the miserable human rights violations and starvation of the North Korean people," a group of five conservative groups, who have called for an end to the classes, said in a statement. "This kind of unification education is just as biased as the anti-communist education of the past."
North Korea has been called the world’s worst human rights violator and was recommended by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to be re-designated as a country of particular concern for its government’s engagement in “systematic and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
Christian Post Reporter Joseph Alvarez in Washington contributed to this report.
