DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies on the Shin Case (aka “Give ‘em enough rope”)
In the interest of being, as they say over at Fox News, “fair and balanced,” today we present the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies statement on the Shin Dong-hyuk case. It is an interesting perspective which I believe merits wide circulation. To paraphrase, “we resolutely deny that we have any homosexuals in our country, but freely admit that our country produces axe-murderers, child rapists, and other varieties of ‘human scum’.” Sort of reminds me of that part of “Alice’s Restaurant” where Arlo the Litterbug is told to join the bench with the murderers, rapists, and even daddy rapists, during his draft induction medical.
As Curtis Melvin has so helpfully pointed out, in denying that Shin was born in Camp 14, the North Korean authorities inadvertently located the place of his birth as being in Camp 18. A friend of mine is a recovering addict. She once told me that at rehab, the counselors stressed with the patients the imperative to be honest: once one started lying, one wouldn’t be able to keep the lies consistent (particularly if one relapsed and was impaired). Maybe they can convert one of the prison camps into a giant rehab center, because it sure sounds like the North Korean leadership is in need of counselling. But, hey, judge for yourselves:
U.S. Accused of Cooking up Conspiratorial Documents against DPRK
Pyongyang, January 20 (KCNA) -- The spokesman for the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies released the following statement on Tuesday:
The truth behind the conspiratorial "human rights" racket kicked up by the U.S. and other hostile forces against the DPRK in the UN arena is being self-exposed.
It has been disclosed that the "report of the Commission of Inquiry" on the human rights performance in the DPRK, which served as a basis of the anti-DPRK "human rights resolution" rammed through the plenary meeting of the 69th UN General Assembly last December by hostile forces, was no more than a false document cooked up on the basis of false "testimonies" made by human scum.
As reported recently, defector from the north Sin Tong Hyok, who had come out as a primary "testifier" when working out the above-said "report of the Commission of Inquiry", confessed that he had told lies about his past and pledged not to be involved in such "human rights campaign" against the DPRK in the future.
As the DPRK had already clarified, Sin is a swindler who had appeared with false name and career and no more than a parasite who has prolonged his remaining days by noisily trumpeting about the misinformation provided by his master.
Sin had styled himself a "survivor" in the "concentration camp of political offenders" that does not exist in the DPRK, no more than a sheer lie and a fiction.
He is a heinous criminal who raped a girl under age that can never be pardoned in Europe and all other parts of the world.
He should not only admit his lies but make clear his true colors as a criminal.
If he fails to do so, the DPRK will bring to light his crimes before the whole world.
What was ridiculous was that Bush, Kerry and others in the ruling camp of the U.S., not content with resorting to their desperate anti-DPRK campaign, let even such liars as Sin appear at a "high-level meeting on the human rights performance in the north" and other arenas and highly praised him. These disgusting behaviors remind one of a drowning man catching at even a straw.
The U.S. authorities, bereft of reason as they were hell-bent on their hostile policy toward the DPRK, staged a farce by getting such a swindler involved in their anti-DPRK human rights racket, although they were aware of his true colors. But it only brought to light the true colors of their conspiratorial "human rights" racket before the world.
The U.S. "invited" Sin to the UN and other arenas and staged "hearing" and distributed "the report of the CI" worked out on the basis of false testimonies as a UN document before cooking up a UN "resolution." This cannot but be the most mean and shameless act of flouting the conscience of the world people.
Sin's admission of his lies goes to prove that everything told by those who claim to be "defectors from the north" cannot be trusted and the above-said report is peppered with sheer lies.
So needless to say, all the "resolutions on the human rights" forcibly adopted against the DPRK on the basis of such false documents are invalid.
It is bitter shame on the UN that it was involved in the racket against the DPRK, taken in by the U.S. plots.
The hostile forces should retract at once the false documents including the "resolutions on the human rights" based on the lies told by human scum, though belatedly.
The international community should take a fair stand, keenly aware that the U.S. and other hostile forces' "human rights" racket against the DPRK is utterly irrelevant to the defence of genuine human rights and it is the most dangerous move to tarnish its image and find a pretext to invade it, to all intents and purposes.
NB: As someone who testified before the COI, I am not sure if this statement makes me "human scum" or if that sobriquet is reserved for former residents of North Korea who testified before the COI (and therefore us foreign witnesses are something else). Anyhow, some years ago KCNA called me a "rowdyist for human rights." Coming from KCNA, either term is ok by me.
Comments
North Korea launches the offensive on all fronts.
The opening was the suicide blast of Shin within the USA. Then NK claimed to end the UN play.
And now it demands, that US officials should be brought before UN panels concerning the CIA torture report.
No bad chess play.
Who is 'the spokesman for the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies'? And how many academics and policy makers sit on that (presumably esteemed) body? I really wish that journalists traveling to the DRPK and interviewing North Korean diplomats in the coming weeks would have the common sense to ask. How big is the association? Etc. This is the kind of stuff AP could certainly be doing, but which The Guardian, Suddeutsche Zeitung, and other foreign newspapers sending reporters into the country could at the very least get a refusal to engage on. Or are we doomed to another two years of articles about high heels and Viennese coffee just off of Kim Il-sung Square? (Yes, it's time to invest because someone needs to pay for the sod [though never the labour!] at Masikryong.)
Let's assume that the Association does not exist only on paper -- or, in other words, that it is not just a pen name for the National Defense Commission. In this case, Association members would likely include North Korean academics as well as members of the Foreign Ministry. Such people might benefit from spending a couple of weeks touring around American or British prisons and visiting courtrooms, etc., to get a sense of how things are done in this other part of the world. As I recall, the James Hoare and the British Foreign Office actually arranged just such a tour for some North Korean colleagues several years ago -- but it's probably a bit much to expect that such a person sits on the Association today. Roland, your confidence inspires me that you have an inside track on all of this info. Perhaps you are aware if the DPRK produces people with degrees in international criminal law who might participate in the hypothetical UN inquiry you have mentioned, assuming they were allowed to have passports and maybe even some access to the World Wide Web? Perhaps I'm delusional in holding out even a very minor hope that this Association is as real as, say, North Korea's minority parties (which is to say that its form is unimportant so long as it speaks the same 'master text' as every other state organ, to borrow a concept from B.R. Myers). Anyway it would be nice to have a bit more information, even around the margins. Certainly people writing well-intentioned books about how to engage the DPRK on the human rights front could use it!
When I was in Pyongyang, what actually happened was that two DPRK diplomats came to Britain for an intensive training course on human rights, paid for by the British government. When it was suggested that we make such an offer to the DPRK government, I thought that they would turn us down. But they accepted and two officials did come to Britain. They jibbed a bit at calls arranged on Amnesty but went. They also saw prisons and courts in operation. Both returned and highly praised the course.
We also gave some 200 books on human rights' issues. I handed these over and it became clear later that they were being used. People I did not know from the MFA came up to me at functions - the only time that we met MFA officials who did not deal with Europe or Consular matters - and said they had read them. Their main interest seemed to be account of US problems with human rights issues - but the books were being used, whatever the reason.
I believe that subsequently, visiting DPRK officials have been taken to both prisons and courts but no others have come for training.
For the record, I also, as instructed, regularly asked for access to detention camps, prisons and courts in the DPRK. It was not forthcoming. I met one man who said he was a lawyer but he was trying to get in touch with commercial law specialists in Europe in order, he said, to advertise his services to the business world.
I can see that it is frustrating when journalists and others do not ask the penetrating questions. But the way to learn is to establish a presence and to became accepted - "old friends" do matter (as true in South Korea and China as well, of course). You might then - just - have a chance of getting some real answers occasionally. And even the observation of the apparently trivial can matter. It did in Russia and China before the 1980s. Of course what is seen is only a small part of the picture, but it is a part of it
Adam, spot on r.e. probing and serious in-country journalism. Quite simply, and despite protestations, there are no excuses. I often wonder if the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies is given far more attention than it deserves. Regardless of whether it actually exists (which I very much doubt), their report is little more than a poorly written example of how not to conduct propaganda and we can derive about as much value from it in terms of human rights (here, the DPRK’s 2014 UPR may be a better gauge) as we can putting together a who's who in the leadership from TV line-ups of dignitaries. Essentially, the report has value, but not in its intended form. If the outside world begins to pay enough attention to the Association, I imagine that the DPRK will begin to construct a narrative for the organisation and allow the outside world to 'engage' with it. Essentially, a human rights version of the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries or the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland - a public facing, government instructed, managed, and staffed shield. The veil that masks the UFD’s hand in these ‘NGOs’ is pretty thin, but many still seem oblivious. It is also worth saying that the notion of Track 2 diplomacy being distinct from Track 1 in the DPRK, as suggested by others with alarming frequency, is hopeful at best. Over a decade of failed European engagement policies conducted via both ‘tracks’ bears witness to this fallacy. For the DPRK, Track 2 has been an exercise in maximising profit, minimising expenses, increasing propaganda value, and splitting foreign consensus. Again, all part and parcel of DPRK policy. Of course, the solution to failed engagement is not isolation (or collapsism), as many would argue - it is revised and re-imagined engagement and better knowledge of how power is managed and controlled inside PYG. North Korean exiles, the market, information inflows and outflows - these are where true engagement and change begins.
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