Human Rights Should be at Forefront of Six-Party Talks, Activists Say
About 1,000 democracy and religious freedom advocates pressured the world’s governments to focus on the human rights record of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ahead of the six-party nuclear talks that begin in Beijing this week
About 1,000 democracy and religious freedom advocates pressured the world’s governments to focus on the human rights record of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il ahead of the six-party nuclear talks that begin in Beijing this week.
"We certainly hope that we serve as moral pressure on the Kim Jong-il regime to not only come to the talks but to really come with a view toward seeking meaningful change," Jae Ku, head of the North Korean Project at the U.S. government-funded Freedom House that organized the project, told Reuters.
The July 19 Washington conference featured U.S. and South Korean lawmakers, Jewish holocaust experts, North Korean refugees and Christian humanitarian rights advocates, who said the movement to press North Korea on human rights can support – not hinder - negotiations in the nuclear arms race.
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The U.S. government must guarantee its “negotiations agenda will always include ... at the highest level of priority such human rights issues as family reunification, rule of law development, religious freedom, prison monitoring and needs-based food distribution,” Southern Baptist public policy specialist Richard Land, according to Baptist Press.
Also at the conference, former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky said the U.S., Europe and South Korea must stop the policy of appeasement when dealing with what some call the “most oppressive nation in the world.”
“[We] must force dictators to adjust their policy,” Sharansky said, according BP. “The freedom of the people of North Korea is the best guarantee of the freedom of people in America and Europe.”
Land agreed, saying economic aid packages should have conditions attached.
“We do not believe that financial aid, or any other kind of aid, should be given to the regime if it does no more than agree to curb its WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) activities,” Land said. “An exchange of promises whereby the North Korean regime offered not to export its terrorism in exchange for a license and subsidy from the United States and/or other countries to continue acts of brute terrorism against its own people would not be moral, workable, realistic or acceptable ever.”
North Korea has long topped the list of governments that violate religious freedom and human rights. Human rights groups report that about 400,000 prisoners have died in political prisons in the North under the communist dictatorship of Kim Jong Il and his dead father Kim Il Sung. The government has also been charged with diverting international food aid from its people to its army or the black-market, which resulted in the starvation of anywhere from two to four million North Koreans since 1995.
In light of such figures, Suzanne Scholte, head of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, said human rights should be at the forefront in any debates held with the North.
"We know there are people in the regime, including elites, who are disillusioned as well as the general population, so this is a time when human rights ought to be the main focus," said Scholte, according to Reuters.
Scholte’s group helped pass the North Korean Human Rights Act in 2004, which provides for U.S. support to help North Korean exiles hiding in China move to third countries as well as funding for broadcasts and publications aimed at people inside North Korea.
The six-party talks officially begin on July 26 – the first after a 13 month hiatus, but delegates from North and South Korea met in Beijing on Sunday. The two sides said they wanted to see “substantial progress” in the nuclear arms issue, but did not mention the human rights debate.
