NORTH KOREA

Hearing on North Korea at the US Commission on Religious Freedom

Belgian Parliamentary Committee on North Korea

Media attention to Human Rights Without Frontiers report of 8 January 2002

23 January 2002

Hearing set on abuses by North Korea

by Kim Jin

JoongAng Ilbo (January 12, 2002) / HRWF (16.01.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C E-mail info@hrwf.net C The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom plans to open a public hearing on human rights, including religious oppression in North Korea, in Washington on Jan. 24.

It is the first public hearing on North Korea hosted by an institution of the U.S. government since George W. Bush took office. The panel plans to hear testimony from North Korean defectors.

Several American civic groups and government officials that monitor human rights in North Korea will testify as well as a German doctor, Norbert Vollertsen, who was expelled from North Korea last year for speaking out against Pyongyang's rights abuses.

Lawrence J. Goodrich, the spokesman for the commission, said no further details could be revealed on the hearing. He said that the defectors would give testimony on human rights violations and religious oppression in North Korea.

The commission reports annually on the status of religious freedoms in countries around the world and has criticized, along with the U.S. State Department, North Korea's record of religious repression.

The Belgian Parliament sets up a committee on North Korea

Text of decision

#The undersigned parliamentarians,

• alerted by the humanitarian situation, the human rights situation and the political situation prevailing in North Korea,
• aware that such a situation is the result of the regime in place in North Korea and that it lasted for over half a century amid the quasi- indifference of the international community,
• deeply dismayed by what they themselves observed during their visit to North Korea in the spring of the year 2000,
• convinced that one should alert without delay the public opinion, the Belgian government and European and international institutions and act in order to end this inhuman situation,

have decided to create a "Parliamentarian Committee For North Korea".

#This Committee will launch whatever action conducive to the:

• improvement of the fate of the North-Korean population,
• encouragement of the emergence of democracy,
• promotion of the respect of international norms in the area of basic rights and liberties.

#The World Football Championship, which will take place in South Korea, creates an obvious opportunity to inform the world of the sad predicament of the North-Korean population and to improve its fate.

Among the first actions proposed are:

• vote of a resolution by the Belgian Parliament to be conveyed to the North-Korean authorities,
• creation of an internet site for information and debate on North Korea,
• organisation of a Conference on North Korea,
• proposal of recommendations to the European Commission for the sending and monitoring of humanitarian aid,
• sponsoring and support of the scarce local NGOs obtaining results in a clandestine way,
• encouragement of NGOs and specialised agencies to launch actions in the spirit of the preoccupations of this Committee.

Michiel Maertens will act as Secretary of this Committee.

Media attention to Human Rights Without Frontiers report on inhuman treatment

of pregnant women and babies in North Korean camps

Murder of infants of North Korean women defectors

By Hae Hyun Park

Special correspondent in Paris

Chosun Ilbo (9.01.2002) - The International Civil Liberty Association, Human Rights Without Frontiers, announced January 8 that the murders of infants are being routinely committed. HRWF, headquartered in Brussels, had collected the information from about twenty eyewitnesses defectors around Yanbien, China during the years 2000 and 2001. They made public their findings that compulsory abortions and the murder of newborn babies happen often.

"The Chinese government started to arrest North Korean women with its moral duty to root out trafficking in human beings early 2000. Thus, thousands of North Korean women including some married in China were repatriated to North Korea against their will," a HRWF representative stated. "When arrested, unborn babies and infants were accused of treason and killed like their mothers, who were hunted as enemies of the nation".

According to the HRWF briefing, a woman who had been a prisoner in Onsung concentration camp testified, "Guards ordered us to kill the infants as soon as they were born, and some of us had to let these babies die with wet vinyl bags on their heads on cold floors."

At Onsung, more than four babies reportedly were born and all of them faced the same fate. In Hoi-Ryung concentration camp seven, infants were choked or thrown to death.

One witness who was a guard at Kyongsung concentration camp stated, "One woman had given birth to a child as she was being tortured, and a guard threw out the new-born baby to a dog."

Another witness who had once been a guard of Chongsung concentration camp stated, "Deliveries in the camps were completely prohibited to prevent the number of traitors from increasing. Guards raped the prisoners from time to time, or prisoners had sex with guards for better treatment."

Translated by Hee Kyung Shin