North Korea Atrocities

[gldstwmn]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1035754.htm

N Korea tests weapons on people: BBC
A program made by Britain's BBC says North Korea is killing political prisoners in experimental gas chambers and testing new chemical weapons on women and children.

Titled Access to Evil and being aired on Sunday, the program features an official North Korean document that says political prisoners are used to test new chemical weapons.

In a statement, the BBC said the documentary included comments by Kwon Hyuk, a new name given to a former military attache at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at Prison Camp 22.

Using a drawing, he describes a gas chamber and the victims he says he saw at the prison in the north-east of the secretive communist state, near the Russian border.

"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing," he said.

"Normally, a family sticks together (in the gas chamber)... and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass."

Asked how he felt about the children, he said: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."

The documentary was made for the BBC's This World series.

North Korean officials in London were unavailable to comment.

BBC journalist Olenka Frenkiel told Reuters she had three independent confirmations that Kwon Hyuk was genuine.

The human rights group Amnesty International said it had been unable to confirm previous reports of such testing.

"We have heard of these allegations but we cannot confirm them," a spokeswoman said.

North Korea - described by US President George W Bush as part of an "axis of evil" because of a nuclear weapons program and authoritarian system - has denied accusations of human rights abuses.

A top secret North Korean document also says political prisoners are used for "human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons", the BBC said.

It interviews a person said to be a former prisoner in North Korea who had been ordered to poison others.

"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners. One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women," Sun Ok Lee said, according to the BBC statement.

"All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were quite dead."

Frenkiel said she had also seen other official North Korean documents, one of which referred to the transfer of a prisoner "for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons" in February 2002.

--Reuters

[darklinensuit]

If they can dig tunnels in secret, they can certainly keep this kind of thing a secret. I don't know how Amnesty expects to be able to confirm this kind of story if eyewitness accounts aren't good enough.

- Jake

[greatdarkwing]

Alot of people dont realize what regimes like this do to people....Unfortunately there is no clear cut path as to how to deal with North Korea...Frankly, this is one scary finding...

~Alex

[Rob67]

Is there really any question that totalitarianism governments are relics of history with no place in modern times? We need to act...and hopefully contain this before it becomes a global threat....

Rob

[DownOnRodeo]

Originally posted by greatdarkwing
Alot of people dont realize what regimes like this do to people....Unfortunately there is no clear cut path as to how to deal with North Korea..

As opposed to the particularly clear cut path as to how to deal with Iraq.



(I'm not having a swipe at you Alex, but at the Coalition of the Willing )

[DeeGeMe]

The really sad part of it all is that there are at least a dozen dictators around the world who are doing things to their own citizens 100 times worse than anything Saddam Hussein ever thought about doing. But our government doesn't care because those countries don't have all!

[dissention]

Originally posted by DownOnRodeo
As opposed to the particularly clear cut path as to how to deal with Iraq.



(I'm not having a swipe at you Alex, but at the Coalition of the Willing )

The US, under this administration, has no f*cking clue about how to deal with anything. They simply come up with a target and wing it when it comes to coming up with any plans or strategies.

*runs off to laugh about the ridiculousness of the cancelled flights in Britain*

[dissention]

Originally posted by DeeGeMe
The really sad part of it all is that there are at least a dozen dictators around the world who are doing things to their own citizens 100 times worse than anything Saddam Hussein ever thought about doing. But our government doesn't care because those countries don't have all!

Exactly!

When ChimpCo says we needed to go to war because he was such a violent dictator, I kind of roll my eyes. There is absolutely no question that he was a sick, sick, disgusting man who committed unspeakable atrocities, but he hadn't acted half as bad towards his own people in the last 8-10 years. The US loves to go on and on about how he was just getting worse and worse, but that's simply a lie. The last time Saddam committed such mass atrocities and genocides was when Shrub Sr. encouraged all of the Kurds to revolt against Saddam. They revolted and Saddam reacted by gassing them all and torturing them...as the US stood on the sidelines and watched, not lifting one finger to help them. I guess it's not surprising when you consider that our government aided Saddam in the murdering of thousands of innocent Iranians by giving him WMDs.

I won't sit here and say that it isn't a good thing that Saddam is gone; it's a great thing. But it wasn't done properly, it wasn't done ethically, and it was done only after the American people were lied to. The inspections should have continued and we shouldn't be there now; I will never support this war. I think, however, that the US has to take some accountability for all that is happening. After all, we wouldn't be here right now if we hadn't helped him in the eighties and early nineties. We are partially to blame.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by Rob67
Is there really any question that totalitarianism governments are relics of history with no place in modern times? We need to act...and hopefully contain this before it becomes a global threat....

Rob

Maybe you should enlist.

[CarneVaca]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Maybe you should enlist.

Thanks, I was about to make the same point. It's easy to be an armchair warrior.

I say bring back the phalanx. Put all the armchair combatants right up front.

[Rob67]

Originally posted by gldstwmn
Maybe you should enlist.

Are you so sure that I haven't?

Rob

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by Rob67
Are you so sure that I haven't?

Rob

Did you?

[dissention]

Originally posted by Rob67
Are you so sure that I haven't?

Rob

I'm absolutely positve that you haven't.

[Rob67]

Originally posted by CarneVaca
Thanks, I was about to make the same point. It's easy to be an armchair warrior.

I say bring back the phalanx. Put all the armchair combatants right up front.

Those of us who believe in the war on terror (which I feel that it is in the bigger picture) are not all "armchair warriors." I am supporting family members and friends who are there and believe in what we are doing. And that is all that really matters. I appreciate what we are tring to do in making the world a better place for everyone.

Was every person who supported the war at home during the 40's "armchair warriors?"

Thank the heavens for people in our history who had the marbles to become warriors so that we have the freedoms that some of us take for granted.

Rob

[Rob67]

Originally posted by dissention
I'm absolutely positve that you haven't.

Remember what I said about assuming!!!

Rob