What Laura Ling And Euna Lee Will Endure

[babylonsister]

http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2009/06/08/what-laura-ling-and-euna-lee-will-endure/

What Laura Ling And Euna Lee Will Endure
By: Spencer Ackerman Monday June 8, 2009 9:16 am


This is a glimpse of what it's like inside a North Korean labor camp of the sort that American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee will have to endure now that a kangaroo court has convicted them for spying. It's from the most recent edition of the State Department's annual global human rights report, and is necessarily fragmentary, as few people have emerged from the camps to tell their stories.

Reeducation through labor, primarily through sentences at forced labor camps, was a common punishment and consisted of tasks such as logging, mining, or tending crops under harsh conditions. Reeducation involved memorizing speeches by Kim Jong-il. ...

NGO, refugee, and press reports indicated that there were several types of prisons, detention centers, and camps, including forced labor camps and separate camps for political prisoners. Defectors claimed the camps covered areas as large as 200 square miles. The camps appeared to contain mass graves, barracks, worksites, and other prison facilities.

Conditions in camps for political prisoners are even harsher and feature such pleasantries as "prolonged periods of exposure to the elements; humiliations such as public nakedness; confinement for up to several weeks in small 'punishment cells' in which prisoners were unable to stand upright or lie down; being forced to kneel or sit immobilized for long periods; being hung by the wrists; being forced to stand up and sit down to the point of collapse." Variations on these themes occurred at CIA secret detention facilities, Guantanamo Bay, and, in certain cases, in Afghanistan and Iraq as the result of the Bush administration's interrogation and detention programs, which, at their root, were modeled on methods taught to U.S. troops to resist torture of the sort practiced by, among others, the North Koreans. So Dick Cheney, for instance, can't call what Euny Lee and Laura Ling may face "torture" on pains of inconsistency. Moral clarity in action.

It's unclear to me if the distinction between conditions in forced-labor camps and conditions in political reeducation camps is an ironclad one.

Meanwhile, what's gotten somewhat lost in the justified outrage over Lee and Ling's conviction is the story that took them to the Chinese border with North Korea in the first place: the plight of North Korean women trafficked into China. This is from that same State Department report, and it hints at the importance of Ling and Lee's reporting:

There were no known laws specifically addressing the problem of trafficking in persons, and trafficking of women and young girls into and within China continued to be widely reported. Some North Korean women and girls who voluntarily crossed into China were picked up by trafficking rings and sold as brides to Chinese nationals or placed in forced labor. In other cases, North Korean women and girls were lured out of North Korea by the promise of food, jobs, and freedom, only to be forced into prostitution, marriage, or exploitive labor arrangements. A network of smugglers facilitated this trafficking. Many victims of trafficking, unable to speak Chinese, were held as virtual prisoners, and some were forced to work as prostitutes. Traffickers sometimes abused or physically scarred the victims to prevent them from escaping. Officials facilitated trafficking by accepting bribes to allow individuals to cross the border into China.

A different State Department report, this one about human trafficking, found that when the Chinese government obtains women trafficked into the country from North Korea, it treats them "solely as economic migrants" and routinely repatriates them "back to horrendous conditions."

[Christa]

1. We lost the moral high ground

with the way we treat detainees in Gitmo :banghead:

[T Wolf]

3. That we did - and continue to do so. Until we clean up our own act and prosecute those

who committed crimes IN OUR NAME, the US has no business criticizing any other nation and their policies on this.

[cali]

4. reality doesn't work that way. Nations with blemished records

don't stay silent. In your way of thinking, Hamas has no right to criticize Israel. After all, Hamas has tortured and killed other Palestinians who belong to a different political faction. I suggest you consider living in reality.

[babylonsister]

2. Horrors of North Korea's Gulags

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,192479,00.html

Horrors of North Korea's Gulags
Peter Brookes | June 09, 2009


If there's a shred of good news in the sentencing of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to 12 years in a North Korean prison labor camp, it's that they'll probably never see the inside of one. That's because their plight is receiving significant media coverage here in the United States and across the globe.

snip//

Their (hopefully short-lived) detention won't be pleasant, but it could be a lot worse -- a lot.

Most North Koreans sentenced to prison camp go there not for re-education, but to perish. Defectors report tales of sadistic guards, meager food, disease and brutal forced labor in as many as six camps hidden across the country -- North Korea's gulags. These prisoners endure beatings, forced abortions, infanticide, rape, torture and public executions -- all while doing slave labor whose profits line the pockets of the elite. (Those imported foods and fineries don't come cheap.)

According to the State Department's 2008 Human Rights Report, "re-education through labor" also involves memorizing the speeches of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il. The number of prisoners is unknown; the best guesses put it in the low hundreds of thousands. Some suggest that more than 500,000 people have perished in Pyongyang's Stalinist gulags since they were established in the early 1970s.

While life in the camps certainly isn't laughable, some of the "crimes" are. Offenses include getting caught watching a South Korean soap opera or saying something negative about the Dear Leader. Past State Department reports have cited the sitting on a newspaper, which included a picture of the Dear Leader or his father, Kim Il Sung, the "Great Leader," as a political offense. The authorities -- and their spies -- are everywhere.

And as such, our thoughts and prayers should not only be with Euna Lee, Laura Ling and their families for a safe and speedy return home, but also with the 20 million people of North Korea, who have suffered so long and so hard at the regime's hands.

[FirstLight]

5. How is this any different than what the US has done?

...and is still doing....

While I am so sad for these journalists, they were taking risks and knew what they were doing.
Think about the 15 year old boy grabbed of the street in Iraq or Afganistan and subjected to the torture under our policy...with no hope for release or diplomatic help...not even a kangaroo court to sentence him...

It just sucks all around

[babylonsister]

6. Who said it was? I'm as ashamed and disgusted at our

actions as most thinking Americans are.

[Cha]

7. I'm hoping there's a way

for Al Gore to go over there and get them home.

[GeorgeGist]

8. Sounds like ...

preventive detention and torture.

[northernlights]

9. I seriously doubt they will endure this

They are "high value" prisoners, who were taken and are being held as bargaining chips. Political pawns who will probably be held a short time and be reasonably well cared for. It seems extremely unlikely that Korea will damage the goods in their game of chess.