Sep 2, 2010

News

Citizens’ Alliance Works Tirelessly for Human Rights in North Korea

One of the world’s most serious human rights crises is the totalitarian state of North Korea, where average citizens live like prisoners, and the lives of actual prisoners are nearly unimaginable. Just a decade ago, the world knew little about life inside the Hermit Kingdom. But the determined efforts of one NED grantee, the Citizen’s Alliance for North Korean Human Rights and Refugees, have helped to expose this Orwellian nightmare and build an international coalition dedicated to bringing human rights to North Korea.

Nearly every year since 1999, the Citizens’ Alliance has convened a conference to raise international awareness about its cause, and on August 19-22 the 10th Annual International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees was held in Toronto, Canada.  Co-hosted by Canadian NGO HanVoice, this was the first time the meeting was held in North America; previous meetings having been hosted in South Korea, Japan, Poland, Czech Republic, Norway, the United Kingdom and Australia.

“When I first started this work more than a decade ago and began shouting out "human rights in North Korea, human rights in North Korea," it was an echoless cry into the horizon. Without any surrounding mountains or hills, but alone in a wide open field, there was not one response.” This is how Citizens’ Alliance founder Rev. Benjamin Yoon describes the early days of his work.

The Citizens’ Alliance first began working with NED in the late 1990s. It was surviving on a small budget of member contributions, which meant it was independent of the government and any other political agenda – an important distinction given how politicized the human rights issue had become during the Cold War.

NED’s Journal of Democracy soon published early accounts of North Korea’s secret system of labor camps – an essential part of a totalitarian system that was hidden from the world and ignored by even the major human rights organizations.

NED began providing grants to the Citizens’ Alliance that allowed the organization to gather and distribute reliable and detailed evidence of human rights violations in North Korea; inform the international community of these abuses and facilitate the development of an international network of NGOs and specialists dealing with North Korean human rights and refugees; build support in South Korea for the defense of human rights in the North; and increase the pressure on the North Korean government to end its egregious and systematic abuse of human rights. The Citizens' Alliance subsequently also expanded its efforts to assist North Korean escapees make the difficult adjustment to South Korean society.

The past decade has seen a remarkable surge of these refugees from North Korea – from virtually none at the time of the first Citizens’ Alliance conference in 1999 to almost 20,000 today. The impressive growth of this community means the bridge between North Korea and the rest of the world has been widened immeasurably, allowing more information to flow in both directions. North Korea is not nearly as isolated as it was a decade ago, and Citizen’s Alliance has been critical in this change.

NED President Carl Gershman spoke to the conference this year about the key role this community of defectors is playing to educate both South Koreans and the world about life inside North Korea, and to end the isolation and suffering of those still trapped inside.  In a related op-ed published in the National Post Gershman wrote

“developing new ways to support change in North Korea is just one of the vital roles that defectors can play.  Of equal importance is their ability to function as a ‘bridge population’ linking two profoundly different Korean societies. The defectors can offer authentic people-to-people contacts that can end the isolation of the North Korean people and help South Koreans understand their northern brothers and sisters. The defector community is an invaluable resource that can facilitate the eventual integration of the now destitute and closed society of the North into an open and united Korean peninsula.”

The Toronto conference heard first-person accounts from two such defectors:  one a former officer of North Korea’s People’s Safety Agency (PSA) and the other a former hairdresser – who described the horrifying conditions they escaped.  Both still feel the regime’s shadow, and wore hats to shield their identity. The former officer also took the precaution of covering his face with a mask.

Gershman strongly endorsed the efforts of the Citizens’ Alliance to work with such defectors, and urged conference participants to support the education and training of North Korean refugees. “Having such a core of proficient professionals will be an indispensable asset when the time for the rebuilding of North Korea comes, as someday it surely will.”