[USFK Forums] Outrage After Defector Claims N. Korea is Murdering Disabled Babies

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Outrage After Defector Claims that North Korea is Murdering Disabled Babies

Posted on March 29, 2006 by The Universe Newsroom (totalcatholic.com)

The world community has been called on to be more vocal in condemning human rights abuses in North Korea following new allegations that disabled babies are routinely killed after birth.

The revelations came to light after a North Korean doctor defected from the Communist country earlier in the week. Ri Kwang-ch told a human rights panel that there are hardly any disabled people living north of the thirty-eighth parallel due to widespread infanticide.

Following Mr Ri's testimony, Catholic Peer Lord Liverpool, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on North Korea, critisised the Stalinist dictatorship of Kim Jung-ill and called on politicians both at home and in South Korea to step up dialogue with the north to express outrage.

The revelation that disabled babies are being killed as a matter of routine is another graphic example of North Korea's appalling record on human rights,” he said. “Although we need to engage directly with the North Koreans, we should never be mute in our condemnation of these barbaric practices. Too often political priorities and media coverage relegate issues like this to the footnotes. We need to be far more out-spoken.

At present South Korea has adopted a policy of “silent” diplomacy, refraining from criticising the outrages in public, a practice that Lord Liverpool says is counterproductive. He categorised the latest revelations as “systematic of a political ideology that “elevates might and venerates brute force.”

“This practice of eugenics, the enslavement of vast swathes of their population, the denial of diversity, and the systematic persecution and torture of dissidents in gulags and concentration camps is sadly reminiscent of Stalin's Russia. North Korea has become Stalin's last redoubt." Mr Ri's revelations though shocking, are sadly nothing new.

Last year a North Korean woman Kim Chun Ae, described the horrors of life in a North Korean prison, where babies were routinely aborted if they were Chinese - facts supported by a 2005 US State Department report, which described conditions in North Korean prisons, as “ harsh and life-threatening.”



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