 LONDON - The BBC has broadcast harrowing footage that purportedly shows people being publicly executed by firing squad in North Korea for trying to flee the totalitarian regime. The pictures, filmed in secret just over a month ago in towns near the North Korean border with China, were obtained by the British broadcaster and shown on television late Monday night. They add to a mountain of evidence of massive human rights abuses by Pyongyang, which the government consistently denies. "Those who are to be executed are brought in a vehicle, they are gagged and half dead," one North Korean defector, Kim Young Soon, told the BBC. "Then they say you are being judged in the name of the people because you tried to escape. They fire a single shot and say you are being shot because you are an enemy of the people, then these people fall and die on the spot," she said, speaking through a translator.
| What galls me is that, after NKor either falls apart or is taken apart, the shooters are going to get off. There'll be lots of people bitching about the injustices of "decommification." |
In an exclusive report, the BBC showed shaky footage of prisoners standing in a field as an off-screen voice gave the order to take aim and fire. "Aim at the enemy. Single shot. Fire. Fire. Fire. Cease firing," the voice commanded, according to subtitles. Up to 1,000 local townspeople are forced to watch the executions and told that they too will be shot if they try to leave, said Kim Young Soon. The BBC said it was impossible to verify the authenticity of the tape due to the impenetrable nature of the regime, but the pictures corresponded with a wealth of witness accounts given by people who managed to escape the country. "It is very important that we now have this film footage because what we have been saying for years is happening," said Elizabeth Batha, an international advocate of the human rights organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
| If you're that determined not to believe it, the pictures aren't going to change your mind. The response I expect to see will be that the sympathizers simply don't say anything about it, in the expectation that it'll be forgotten in a month. |
Bill Rammell, Under Secretary of State at Britain's Foreign Office, reiterated a call to the international community to consider tougher action against North Korea if it failed to make progress soon on human rights abuse.
| Like what, exactly -- sic your big brother on them? Fred noted yesterday that "intolerable" means that you don't tolerate it anymore. You guys ready to find the NKors 'intolerable'? |
"Some of the very credible reports that come forward about gas experimentation, about infanticide, about whole generations of families being locked up are absolutely appalling," he told the BBC, according to a separate transcript of the interview. "I think we're right to put pressure on the regime," he said. "I think the record, arguably, in North Korea is the worst in the world," said Rammell, who visited the Stalinist state in September 2004. Last week, the British minister confirmed that European countries were preparing to submit a resolution to the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission, which is meeting in Geneva, condemning abuse by Pyongyang and continuing the mandate of a UN rights expert to monitor the country. The Special Rapporteur, another Swede with a sinecure Vitit Muntarbhorn, was appointed last year but he has yet been granted access to the country.
| So much for that bright idea. |
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