Human Rights NGO's Are Getting Angry   2008-08-14 15:24

A few days ago, Heejin Kim, Director of the Korean branch of Amnesty International, had an interview with Sisain (a weekly magazine). According to Ms. Kim, she had never felt so stressed out before as she feels these days. Even the smallest mistake on Amnesty's side could give the police an excuse to shut them away, not to mention that important witnesses tend to become unavailable for no particular reason. Amnesty International, had released a preliminary report on the situation in Korea four weeks ago. According to Ms. Kim, another short report is due before the end of this month, and in September a fuller report will be submitted to the UN Human Rights Council. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Korean government should be pulling all sorts of dirty tricks in order to prevent "inconvenient truths" from reaching the UN. After all that they did to its own People! Just skim through my other posts to get a glimpse of the brutality.

President Lee Myung-Bak speaking at a party on August 12. He said that many of us who protest against his decision to give up quarantine with regard to U.S. beef imports actually eat U.S. beef and send children to U.S. colleges. Which isn't altogether false... but then, his aides are reported to have tried to force reporters not to report what the President had just said. An embargo is one thing, but censorship is another!

And here's an excellent statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission, which I strongly recommend you to read. It represents results of an independent investigation of one of the issues I reported on last week: namely, that police officers were being paid cash for arresting demonstrators. Again, the Asian Human Rights Commission is positively appalled by what's going on in a country which, just until a year ago, was believed to be one of East Asia's leaders in the protection of human rights. Believe it or not, we're not a leader in that respect anymore. Perhaps we never were; but in any case, right now, South Korea is in a very bad shape.

Perhaps you still remember what I reported in mid-June about the untimely audit of KBS, the nation's largest TV station. That audit was completed just last week, and -- surprise! -- the government could not find any corruption in CEO Jeong Yeon-Ju. Too bad, the right-wing government was trying to fire Mr. Jeong (a left-wing man) and gain unlimited control over KBS! But then, it didn't matter. Instead of corruption, the government sued Mr. Jeong for breach of trust, because Mr. Jeong didn't make as much money for KBS as somebody might have wanted. So he was fired. Of course, Mr. Jeong is trying to fight back; but good luck winning such a lawsuit in a country where the President's word is the law. Meanwhile, everyone in the right-wing group is eyeing Mr. Jeong's former post. Which friend of President Lee's is going to win the coveted seat? As for me, I couldn't care less. They're all exactly the same.

Tomorrow is August 15, the 63th anniversary of our liberation from Japanese Imperial forces. It is also what the government claims to be the 60th anniversary of the "establishment of the country", by which they mean little more than the 60th anniversary of the day the right-wing came to power. Whatever the name is, the government is planning to hold some flashy events in the downtown area of Seoul, which is where a lot of us have been protesting day after day for the last three months. Just a couple of hours ago, major NGO's and various groups of citizens began to announce their plans for tomorrow. It seems that the government and its People will be fighting for the same spot. What will happen? Nobody knows. As usual, no single organization oversees all the demonstrations, so it's all up to individual citizens and groups to decide what to do, where to go, and at what time to get together. We can only hope for one thing: please, no more violence.

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