Action Report

Reported by Shojun Sunagawa

We can no longer wait!
There could not be national security when the violation of human rights is ignored!
━Democratic nations should expressly indicate that respect for human rights is imperative in the negotiations North Korea.

The significance of the Tokyo International Conference: the guide for the direction of No Fence

The following summarizes the Tokyo International Conference for the Abolition of North Korea Prison Camps Commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held on December 7, 2008 by No Fence.
* This international conference was broadcasted live. The video is available on the NetLive Website, http://www.netlive.ne.jp/archive/event/081207.html.

The conference was held in the desire to have an opportunity for opinion exchange that would help find the steps to present a blueprint for the abolition of prison camps while asking ourselves what we could and should do to eliminate the prison camps in North Korea.

The conference began at 10:00 a.m. and ended at 4:00 p.m. with a lunch break in between. The moderator for the morning session was Mr. Kenji Onuma (professor of law at Senshu University), who is the caretaker of No Fence, and for the afternoon was Ms. Mokuri Ozawa (Joint Representative of No Fence).

Astonishing similarities between the prison camps of North Korea and Nazi Germany” by Haruhisa Ogawa

The conference started with the lecture of Mr. Ogawa (former professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo and currently a professor at Nishogakusha University), who is the deputy representative of No Fence, which was titled “astonishing similarities between the prison camps of North Korea and Nazi Germany.” He introduced “the White Paper on the Treatment of German Nationals in Germany” issued by the British government in 1939” that publicized the brutality of Nazi Germany. He expressed the attitude of taking part in the Tokyo International Conference, and suggested, while looking back on his past, that the steps found by reading and understanding the White Paper could be applied to the earliest release possible of the people who were confined in the North Korean prison camps.

Mr. Ogawa learned the existence of this White Paper in a book written by H. G. Wells titled “the Rights of Man, Or What Are We Fighting For?,” and Mr. Teru Hamano, who had translated the book into Japanese, also appeared on the stage. Mr. Hamano spoke about the importance of “the Rights of Man, Or What Are We Fighting For?” and the background of writing the book, which is considered one of the most influential books of the 20th century. He also explained the relevance between the release of camp prisoners and the “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want” stated by Mr. H. G. Wells, who is sometimes called the father of the declaration of human rights, and Mr. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, who endorsed the declaration.

Dr. Kensuke Shiba, who is a professor at Tokyo Woman's Christian University and the author of “the Holocaust: the Full Picture of the Genocide of Jews by the Nazis (Japanese),” an important book in the verification of the truth of the overly brutal Nozis, also managed to join the conference. Dr. Shiba described the historical background and changes of Buchenwald and other Nazi concentration camps in which forced labor was organized. He mentioned the fact that those people who were involved in the establishment of the concentration camp system were tried by a court, and suggested the steps towards the demolition of the prison camps in North Korea.

“Security guard education taught by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il” by An Myung-Chul

Mr. An worked as a security guard at the political prison camp No.22 in the absolute control area in North Korea between 1987 and 1994. He defected from North Korea to and fled to Korea in 1995. He currently serves as a joint representative of NK Freedom. Mr. An talked about the education given by Kim Il Sung that he had received as a security guard of North Korean National Security Agency (NSA). He confessed the fact that he was indoctrinated not to treat the prisoners as humans. This revealed the realities of the abuse and massacre of prisoners by the security guards.

Mr. An indicated the locations of the prison camp No. 15 and the village to which people who have returned from Japan in the repatriation program. Further, he revealed the location of the prison camp No. 16, which was the first time ever. He also pointed out the positions of the nuclear testing facilities and political prison camps and showed strong concerns.

In the lecture, Mr. An was accompanied by a testifier from South Korea, who was to specifically indicate the location of the prison camps. Using satellite pictures said to have been obtained recently, they showed and briefly described the absolute control areas under NSA and revolutionized areas.

First, a testifier, Mr. Shin Dong-hyok, gave an overview of the facilities of the prison camp No.14 and the position of the electric barbed wire while presenting photographs.

Mr. Im Jeong-su subsequently indicated the positions of the prison camp No.18 and the facilities related to coal mining while exhibiting photographs. In addition, the location of the public execution site was revealed.

Mr. An provided an overview of the prison camp No.22 at which he had worked as a security guard, the public execution site and the secret execution site, and testified that he had witnessed the torture of the prisoners and a Japanese wife being beaten to death at a detention facility used for investigations. Furthermore, he stated while indicating the positions of a dam and prison that the dam would be destroyed to kill all prisoners in an emergency so as to protect confidentiality, which was shocking to the audience.

“Testimony from the absolute control area” by Im Jeong-su, Shin Dong-hyok and Yi Choon-sim

First, Mr. Im Jeong-su gave his testimony. He was placed in the political prison camp No.18 in the absolute control area when he was about one year old and confined there for 22 years. He spoke about the reasons why he was imprisoned, the conditions of his family and the realities of the No.18 prison and public execution site. He also mentioned a story that he had heard about tragic facts about the North Koreans who had returned from Japan in the repatriation program.

In the prisons, the prisoners are taught to hate their parents and he himself wished to kill his parents. He said that some people had actually killed their parents. The prisons are called “control offices” in North Korea, which is because humans are treated as objects in the “control offices.”

"Due to time constraints, the interpreter, Mr. Song Yung-bok supplemented the testimony. Quoting from the past testimony of Mr. Im, he told the audience that brutal treatment of prisoners in isolation cells and execution by frying prisoners in a large pot filled with waste oil were taking place in reality, and one of the executors suffered mental illness and became permanently disabled.

Following this, Mr. Shin Dong-hyok went up to the stage. Mr. Shin was born and grew up in the political prison camp No.14, is known as the author of his book, Born in a Prison, I Don’t Know What Love Is (Japanese) and has visited Japan several times in the past to testify. He stated that he had been taught that he had been born to pay for the crimes that his parents had committed, and because of this, he had hated his parents and not felt love between his parents and himself in the prison, and the only way in which he could survive was to monitor his parents.

He also introduced a book titled Man's Search for Meaning written by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps and survived. He picked up a section in the book, saying that although he was yet to understand the meaning, he intended to learn about “freedom of choice.”

He concluded that there must have been some security guards who still had even a bit of conscience and hoped that, some day, such people would raise their voices with the support of the opinion of the international community.

As the last one to give a testimony, Ms. Yi Choon-sim went up to the stage. She served as a nursing officer in the military medical team for approximately11 years in the 1980s and 90s and then, was discharged from the military. She successfully defected from North Korea once, but was detained in China and deported to North Korea. She was subsequently forced to assist the medical and nursing staff at the prison (detention facilities) .of NSA in Hyesan Ryanggang as a nurse She testified in Japan for the first time to the extremely brutal and inhumane treatment of female prisoners including forced abortion that she had witnessed and experienced.

The tremendously cruel treatment of women who had been deported from China, injection of acrinol solution to the belly of pregnant women aiming at the head of a fetus for the purpose of forcing an abortion, wrapping live newborns in newspaper and putting them in a bucket to bury them later all together in a mountain nearby, and other vivid descriptions in her testimony were far too ruthless and violent to describe in words and so striking that all participants in the conference were astonished.

Many of the women who escaped from North Korea had harsh and humiliating experience as a woman more than as a defector, and Ms. Yi requested that the participants be aware of the fact that such tragedy still continued and show their understanding and give support.

She was trying very hard to hold back her tears and push herself to present her testimony. Mr. Song Yung-bok was holding back his tears while interpreting, which implied the graveness of the situations and the seriousness of the testimony.

* The morning session ended with the testimony. The afternoon session after lunch began with the lecture of Mr. David Hawk, the author of the Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps, who is also a former supervisor of the Cambodia Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and a former executive director of Amnesty International USA.

Blueprints of the abolition of the prison camps by David Hawk

Mr. David Hawk claimed that the situations at the prison camps could be condemned in the international community from a legal perspective as a crime against humanity specified in Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. In addition, he stated that the step method for the abolition of nuclear weapons in the six-party talks was in some ways applicable also to the prison camps. He also presented specific blueprints for the demolition of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (detention facilities for suspected terrorists) and expressed that those were applicable also to that the demolition of North Korean prison camps.

While saying that specific proposals for the abolition of prison camps in North Korea could not be presented at that time, he advocated that the plan was to develop a demolition plan step by step with the people who had experienced the camps and had the knowledge of the control system of the prisons.

As a specific proposal for the elimination of forced labor and slavery, he suggested to consider a measure for paying compensation for labor. He asserted that acceptance of food supply plans should be promoted to reduce starvation, and the rights to marriage based on their free will and have children in the prison camps should be granted. He insisted that even those categorized as political prisoners should be provided with the ways to contact the outside world, and the basic rights of the prisoners should be protected as a matter of course. He pointed out all inhumane and unreasonable practice including murders, slavery and torture that took place in the camps and condemned that the prisoners must have been treated according to proper legal procedures.

Mr. Hawk repeatedly emphasized that, as a specific proposal based on international laws, developing the process of disabling and demolition step by step with the former prisoners was important.

Voices of the world reported by Kenji Onuma

Mr. Onuma introduced some voices raised in the world in response to the crimes against human rights and humanity in North Korea through two reports. First, he introduced the human rights report titled “???” concerning North Korea, which was published when Mr. Vaclav Havel, a former president of Czech Republic, Mr. Kjell Magne Bondevik, a former prime minister of Norway and Mr. Elie Wiesel who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 demanded that the UN Security Council take measures against the suppression of human rights in North Korea.

According to Mr. Onuma, this report strongly demands that the UN Security Council intervene in the North Korean government, which supports non-traditional threat to peace in addition to the traditional threat (military suppression), while the conditions of human rights and humanity deteriorate with no potential for improvement. The report insists that the political oppression in North Korea must not be concealed by the nuclear power issue and that the legitimacy for the Security Council to take measures was ensured.

Subsequently, "???" written by Elizabeth Martha was introduced. This book states that the violation of human rights and forced labor are organized and systematically practiced in North Korea. Mr. Onuma further added that, according to this book, genocide of Christians was conducted in North Korea and clear evidence of this existed.

These reports argue that North Korea faces its national and political responsibility and, at the same time, other countries and international organizations also carry the responsibility for the solution. Mr. Onuma maintained that the international community must not overlook the political oppression that is creating the military oppression.

Voices of the world reported by Tomoharu Ebihara

* Mr. Ebihara represents “the Association for the Rescue of North Korean Abductees (ARNKA)” in Chiang Mai in Thailand and carries out rescue activities primarily for Thai abductees. He lectured as the following based on the relationship with North Korea with the stance that the violation of human rights is an international issue.

More than 1,500 last year alone, and although the number temporarily decreased before the Olympics, as many as 1,000 defectors from North Korea have been flowing into Thailand. Thailand has been serving its roles in the international community such as the chief of the ASEAN secretariat and UN human rights reporter for North Korea. Mr. Ebihara reported that the country maintained diplomatic relations with North Korea and its trade volume with North Korea was the third highest following China and South Korea.

By introducing a collection of testimonies of North Korean defectors titled “Are They Telling Us the Truth?” which he had translated into Thai, he stated that no organized information had been available in Thailand and that he wished to further raise the awareness of the human rights issue in Thailand.

Ebihara emphasized the importance of systematically organizing the information on the violation of human rights in North Korea, the testimonies of North Korean defectors, former prisoners and workers at the concentration camps and various other information and sharing such information with the international community through translation into English and other languages as the basic preparation for pressure.

Voices of the world reported by Rajiv Narayan

* Mr. Narayan is a former East Asia researcher at Amnesty International and currently an invited professor at Yonsei University (South Korea). He discussed about primarily two topics. One is the contribution made by Mr. H. G. Wells who had influenced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the other is the position and opinions about the North Korean issue of Amnesty International.

Mr. Narayan spoke about the contribution made by H. G. Wells in the field of human rights by stressing that the Rights of Man written by H. G. Wells in 1940 had influenced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the State of the Union message initiated by Mr. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, in 1941. Mr. Narayan also said that the four types of human freedom declared in the message, i.e., freedom of speech, freedom to worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear, constituted the core of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Subsequently, he introduced the stance and opinions of Amnesty International, established in 1961 with approximately 2.2 million members, concerning the issue of North Korea. Amnesty International recognizes that North Korea is in serious violation of human rights and that its prison camps represent major problems. He stated that they would demonstrate their strong concerns about the violation of human rights, starvation caused by food crisis, torture at the prison camps and public execution, and strive to raise issues.

Proposals and debates

Speakers: Tomoharu Ebihara, David Hawk, Rajiv Narayan, Kim Sung-hun, Song Yung-bok, Im Jeong-su, An Myung-Chul and Shojun Sunagawa

Tomoharu Ebihara:
The issue of North Korea is not systematically communicated in Thailand. He stated that sharing information would be beneficial to future activities.

David Hawk:
He stressed the remarks made in the lecture presented in the blueprints of the abolition of prison camps He said that he expected the actions of the U.S., which was able to raise issues in the international community, and that the issue of human rights in North Korea would be discussed at the stage when the six-party talks moved on to Phase Three although there was a possibility of breakdown.

Because the information collected at that point was the data of crimes committed in the 1980s and 90s, he remarked that the information on the violation of human rights particularly after 2002 needed to be collected and organized, considering the timing of the enactment of the Rome Statute.

Mr. Hawk added that despite the possibility that China exercises its veto, discussions in the UN Security Council and efforts for adoption by the General Assembly would be helpful and that building accomplishments in the EU assembly was also important.

He advised that individuals were also able to file an action in the international court of law. In addition, he stated that building networks in Southeast Asia was also a requirement, and he expected that the voices to condemn the violation of human rights would increase through NGOs and other organizations while international networks were gradually expanding.

Rajiv Narayan:
The current administration of South Korea appears to be somewhat conservative towards the issue of North Korea. He expressed that the awareness of human rights of Indians had been increasing in their interaction with Muslims. In the EU, some active movement had been led by France.

Kim Sung-hun:
Mr. Kim Sung-hun previously worked for the UN World Food Programme for 18 years. He currently represents North Korean Information Database Center, and attendeded this international conference as an international human rights activist.

North Korea does not acknowledge the existence of its prison camps and the reality of North Korea is not known in the world. Considering such conditions, he pointed out that simply calling for cooperation would not produce good results. Mr. Kim suggested that promotional activities through systematic information sharing by using visual tools such as videos and building international networks would be important in the future in order to let the world know about North Korea. He recognized the value of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and mentioned the necessity of human rights investigation by the UN.

Moreover, it would be essential to present clear reasons for filing the action in international criminal trials. He noted that holding discussions for filing the action, collecting and organizing information, making clear presentation and improving presentation skills would be important.

Song Yung-bok:
Mt. Song felt that the issue of the violation of human rights concerning North Korean prison camps was hardly known by the general public including the upper classes of administrative bodies. He claimed that grassroots activities such as using publications and sending messages to the media that individuals could easily engage in were important in order to appeal to society.

Im Jeong-su:
He had strong concerns about the fact that all prisoners could have been killed in an emergency situation and insisted that urgent action was needed.

An Myung-Chul:
They were to kill all prisoners estimated to possibly reach 300,000 in number when an emergency occurred. He himself was trained to shoot the prisoners as a security guard on the assumption of such situation. He stated that he would carry out activities to widely communicate the facts about the violation of human rights in North Korea both inside and outside South Korea and revealed the future plans for the activities of NK Freedom.

Further, the pressure from the international community such as human rights investigations conducted by the UN would be effective as evident in the past case of Amnesty International in which North Korea sensitively reacted to international public opinion. Mr. An expressed that he intended also to engage in lobbying activities to achieve this, and would also condemn human rights violation at detention facilities other than the prison camps while, at the same time, focusing on the mental care of the victims.

Shojun Sunagawa:
We urgently need to move from the idealism of “we should…” to more realistic actins. I stated that we would collect concrete evidence for the purpose of filing lawsuits and promote systematic development of information into databases and sharing of the databases with an aim to raise international public opinion based on the “crime against humanity” specified in Article 7 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court.

* Ms. Ozawa acting as the moderator expressed at the end of the panel discussion that in the sense that each individual connected to another and develop solidarity would create power, individuals were the ones to play the leading roles. I felt that this statement reflected the significance of grassroots actions.

Poem recitation by Machiko Nabika

After the proposals were presented and debates ended, Ms. Nabika, a caretaker of No Fence, recited her poem, “Ningen dakara (because I am a human)” together with the words of appreciation to the speakers and participants and concluded the conference. (extract of the poem)

* This concluded the Tokyo International Conference.

Written by Shojun Sunagawa

Humans make a big mistake when we turn our back on the history. Humans did not want to admit the existence of Nazi concentration camps that were unbearably brutal. Numerous testimonies, however, shook the world, investigations were conducted and the truth was gradually revealed. It is certain that the key to one of many doors that we need to break open before we can reach the release of the prison camps is contained in the questions asked by the White Paper of 1939 beyond the passage of 70 years.

North Korea is governed by the world’s worst totalitarian dictator who is wishing to be respected and feared as a great leader. The Kim Jong-il regime continues to purge numerous people who fail to show loyalty while reinforcing the cult of personality using fear and starvation.

Many of the measures presented by the UN functions and organizations, the six-party talks, the EU, the U.S. South Korea, Japan and other countries have resulted in the sustained power of the North Korean leaders. The members of the international communities have been unable to take coordinated actions against the Kim Jong-il regime that threatens the international community. The reality is that the Kim Jong-il regime takes advantage of the disorder and obtains food and fuels, and only the upper part of the government is chuckling to themselves.

Behind the chuckling dictator, so many innocent people are living next to death right at this moment, being humiliated or brutally put to death, which is the reality in this 21st century that exists in this world. The crimes against humanity are evident based on the testimonies of a number of defectors from North Korea. The tragic situations of the violation of human rights taking place in North Korea is hardly describable in words, which are acts of crime that violate the basic rights of human that could not be forgiven.

The situations in the Korean Peninsula are likely to change dramatically in the near future. There has been a testimony that all prisoners are shot to death or killed by destroying a dam in an emergency situation. This may seem hardly likely, but this is a country in which inconceivable crimes against human rights exist and incomprehensible claims continue to be presented. Measures are urgently needed. Dramatic changes to the conditions may result in a large number of victims and serious effects.

Allowing a world without human rights to exist could mean the denial of our existence itself. So many valuable propositions were presented in this international conference, and each of them has been engraved in my mind to become the indicators for future activities.

If there is unforgivable conduct there, and if there is a reality that must not exit does exit, each one of us must raise his/her voice without fearing anything, present a determined and firm attitude with dignity and take positive action without waiting. Even if you are alone, even from today.