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Contact: Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, 82-70-8256-3799, r2pnorthkorea@gmail.com
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 25, 2012 /Christian
Newswire/ -- North Korean refugees and human rights activists will rally on
the International Holocaust Remembrance Day to tell the world that genocide must
stop.
Over 5,000 people are expected to join the mass demonstrations, which will be
held at the Seoul Station Plaza in Seoul, South Korea, as well as other
locations in Jakarta, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Berlin, New York, London and Tokyo.
Organized by the non-partisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North
Korea (WCSGNK), the demonstrations are part of an international general strike
which will take place on Friday, Jan. 27, the same day that Soviet forces
liberated Auschwitz, the largest forced-labor and extermination camp for Jewish
people in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1945.
That date was chosen so that the public might know that in our day, genocide,
forced labor and horrific mass atrocities occur every day in North Korea, said a
spokesperson for WCSGNK.
"North Korea is actively targeting for destruction every group protected under
the U.N. Genocide Convention, through its decades-long policy of killing the
half-Chinese babies of North Korean women forcibly repatriated by China --
constituting genocide on national, ethnical and racial grounds -- and its
systematic annihilation of its indigenous religious population and their
families," reported the spokesperson. "To date, the DPRK is responsible for the
death, starvation and torture of millions of innocents."
Over 5,000 people are expected to participate in a mass demonstration from 2
p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Seoul Station Plaza. It will be followed by a mass
march to the Chinese Embassy. This will make it the largest demonstration to
date to specifically target the DPRK genocide and crimes against humanity.
Speakers will include Mr. Jong Hoon Son and Mr. Seong Ho Ji. Son is the
president of the Vision Network of North Korean Defectors. Son's brother was
executed by DPRK for practicing Christianity.
Ji is the president of Now Action and Unity for Human Rights (NAUH) in Seoul. Ji
is severely physically disabled yet managed to escape North Korea on crutches in
2006 and has been holding demonstrations every Saturday along with other North
and South Korean young people and college students for North Korean human rights
since April 2010.
Also speaking will be Mr. Chol-Hwan Kang, former child prisoner at Yodok
concentration camp and author of the Aquariums of Pyongyang, Mr. Seong-min Kim,
executive director of Free North Korea Radio, Mr. Yoon-geul Lee, president of
North Korea Strategic Information Service Center and Mr. Chun-young Im,
president of the Free North Korea Military Union. Im, a former member of the
DPRK military elite, will speak concerning the state-commissioned practice of
chemical and biological weapon experimentation on political prisoners in North
Korea.
At 4:30 p.m., demonstrators will deliver a letter to the Chinese Government,
imploring its members to stop repatriations of North Korean refugees. As an ally
to the DPRK, the Chinese government currently returns refugees found in China to
North Korea, where refugees face torture, imprisonment in concentration camps,
and execution for the "crime" of leaving the country, in violation of the 1951
UN Refugee Convention, its 1967 Protocol and the UN Convention Against Torture.
Activists also hope the demonstration will urge South Korean leaders to act for
refugees in China through diplomatic protection, the spokesperson said.
"They are citizens of the Republic of Korea and refugees under International
law," said Robert Park, a Korean-American human-rights activist who was detained
in North Korea for 43 days and was tortured in 2009, after crossing the border
demanding the DPRK release all of its estimated 250,000 political prisoners. "We
need to break the prejudice in South Korea. We want to honor the defectors as
the leaders of this movement."
If South Korean leaders interceded strongly in behalf of the refugees in China
on the grounds that they are citizens of the Republic of Korea according to
South Korea's constitution, they could prevent mothers and small children from
being returned to DPRK where children have been systematically murdered for
being part-Chinese and mothers executed or placed in concentration camps, Park
said.
The DPRK runs a network of concentration camps where an estimated 1 million
innocents have been murdered in silence and 250,000 political prisoners,
one-third of them children are forced to perform slave labor and are
deliberately starved and subject to systematic rape and torture, according to
reports from WCSGNK.
Genocide Watch, a Washington-based international nongovernmental organization
that seeks to end genocide, said in a report last month that North Korea has
"committed genocide and political mass killings," and is "a serial killer
state."
On Genocide Watch Board of Advisors is Samantha Power, senior director for
multilateral affairs at the U.S. National Security Council. Park said he wants
to meet with Power to discuss convincing national governments to invoke the
"responsibility to protect."
For More information or to request an interview, contact Worldwide Coalition to
Stop Genocide in North Korea (non-partisan) at
Email:
r2pnorthkorea@gmail.com
Phone:
82-70-8256-3799