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   From: Citation-10PIC@noMORONpilots.usa   
      
   Starving North Koreans are being publicly executed for stealing food --   
   while schoolchildren are forced to watch.   
   North Korea's Killing Fields   
   By Ramola Talwar Badam   
   January 21, 2004   
      
      
   Starving North Koreans have been publicly executed for stealing food and   
   have died of malnutrition in labor camps, Amnesty International said in a   
   report released yesterday.   
      
   The human rights group urged the North Korean government to "ensure that   
   food shortages are not used as a tool to persecute perceived political   
   opponents."   
      
   The report — released in Bombay at the World Social Forum, an international   
   gathering of antiglobalization activists — records the chilling testimony of   
   North Korean refugees interviewed in South Korea and Japan, and interviews   
   with international aid groups during 2002 and 2003.   
      
   The report accuses the North Korean government of distributing food   
   unfairly, favoring those who are economically active and politically loyal.   
      
   "Some North Koreans, who were motivated by hunger to steal food grains or   
   livestock, have been publicly executed," Amnesty International researcher   
   Rajiv Narayan said.   
      
   "Public notices advertised the executions, and schoolchildren were forced to   
   watch the shootings or hangings," he said.   
      
   Public executions were at their highest from 1996 to 1998, when famine   
   gripped North Korea, the report said.   
      
   Refugees told Amnesty International that food usually consisted of potato   
   skins and beans.   
      
   North Korea's isolated Stalinist regime has relied on foreign aid to feed   
   its people since revealing in the mid-1990s that its state-run farming   
   industry had collapsed.   
      
   The report appears to confirm fears of the United States and others that   
   food supplies are being diverted to the military or given as rewards to   
   supporters of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.   
      
   "We were always so hungry and resorted to eating grass in spring," said one   
   person, identified only as Kim, who served four years in a labor camp on   
   treason charges. Kim spoke of meals being taken away as punishment if   
   detainees were caught speaking to each other.   
      
   "When someone died, fellow prisoners delayed reporting his death to the   
   authorities so that they could eat his allocated breakfast," Kim said.   
      
   Human rights activists have criticized North Korea for its harsh labor   
   camps, where people are detained after fleeing to China to escape famine and   
   political repression.   
      
   China has a treaty with Pyongyang that obliges it to return fleeing North   
   Koreans, but allows them to leave for the South if their cases become   
   publicly known.   
      
   On Monday, the United Nations' World Food Program said it had been forced to   
   cut off food aid to 2.7 million North Korean women and children during the   
   country's harsh winter because of a lack of foreign donations.   
      
   A key issue for the North's biggest food donors — the United States and   
   South Korea — has been Pyongyang's restrictions on allowing foreign agencies   
   to monitor who receives food aid.   
      
   The Amnesty International report called for "free and unimpeded access" for   
   humanitarian groups to all parts of North Korea.   
      
      
      
   --   
   Left-wing liberals are EVERYTHING they accuse the right of being.   
   They are mean, vicious, hateful, greedy, cold-hearted, closed-minded,   
   selfish, intolerant, bigoted and racist.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)