No sympathy for 'Dear Leader': U.S. activist accuses Kim Jong-Il of 'genocide'
Friday, October 31, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
An American human rights activist said last week that the clash of values between freedom and dictatorship is on display in Korea.
“Nowhere is this clash of ideologies more vividly illustrated than on the Korean Peninsula, where you have one country that is a land of darkness and enormous suffering where its people are enslaved and isolated by a dictator and the other country that is full of light and hope and known for sharing that life and hope with the rest of the world,” she said.
Scholte said a “holocaust” is underway in North Korea.
“Today, we know that Kim Jong-Il is committing genocide by targeting specific groups for extermination -- specifically those he deems disloyal,” she said.
“He has used food aid as a weapon against his own people, cutting off portions of the country not deemed loyal. He has utilized the generosity of free nations to maintain power and avoid reform by imprisoning and killing those who dare to cry out for change. We know he has a vast network of political prison camps where even children are enslaved and worked to death."
" We know he has murdered millions of people through intentionally starving them to death and through working them to death in his political prison camps. We know he continues to hold POWS from the Korean War and has abducted citizens from South Korea, Japan and other nations. We know he publicly executes people who have tried to flee his hell on earth and jails and tortures people who worship God.”
Kim Jong-Il eventually will face trial for crimes against humanity, she predicted.
Scholte said human rights abuses in North Korea were ignored during the six-nation nuclear talks, yet “millions of North Koreans have died.”
“Actually, died is the wrong word because it suggests they simply passed away," she said. "They were in fact starved to death, worked to death, tortured and beaten to death, publicly executed, by the very deliberate and very intentional policies of Kim Jong-Il.”