Did North Korea Reall Force a Mother to Drown Her Baby?
Amidst the desperate and appalling chronicle of horrors presented across 372 pages in the full UN report into rights abuses in North korea, the chilling testimony of a young woman chosen Jee Heon, sent to a prison military camp later beingness returned from Communist china, stands out.
Giving testify to the commission's first public evidence session, in Seoul last August, Jee explained the camp guards' policy towards women who returned to North korea pregnant. The state's strict rules over perceived racial purity meant most of these women endured forced abortions, lest their babies accept Chinese fathers. Ane woman, however, successfully gave birth, Jee said.
"The baby was crying as information technology was born; nosotros were so curious, this was the first time we saw a baby being born. And so we were watching this baby and we were so happy. But of a sudden we heard the footsteps," she said. The footsteps belonged to a guard, who ordered the mother to drown her infant.
Jee continued: "The female parent was begging, 'I was told that I would not be able to take the infant, but I really got lucky and got pregnant, and then let me go on the baby, please forgive me', but this agent kept beating this woman, the mother who simply gave birth. And the babe, since it was just born, it was but crying. And the female parent, with her shaking hands she picked up the baby and she put the baby face downward in the water. The baby stopped crying and nosotros saw this water bubble coming out of the oral fissure of the baby. And at that place was an one-time lady who helped with the labour, she picked upwards the baby from the bowl of water and left the room quietly."
The show forms role of a peculiarly shocking section of the written report on the experiences of North Koreans who escape to China and are sent back, often with the aid of Chinese government. The report describes forced, late-term abortions without anaesthetic – sometimes using rusty instruments, the apply of chemicals to induce labour, beatings, forced labour and poor diet.
The inquiry heard equally desperate personal testimony from Shin Dong-hyuk, mayhap the most famous escapee from North korea – the only prisoner ever known to take successfully escaped from a and then-chosen 'total control camp' for political prisoners.
Shin – who was born in Camp 14 in 1981 through a matrimony engineered by guards between his unwilling parents – described his childhood there, including how a daughter aged about seven was beaten to death later on she was plant to have slipped a few spilled grains from the guards' food rations into a pocket. Mice were rife in the camp but could simply be caught and eaten on the rare occasions guards agreed, he said.
Shin too described what happened when he accidentally dropped a sewing machine at the factory where he was forced to work. "The guard told the floor director to cutting off my finger, so I got on my knees and I begged not to exercise so just that didn't work apparently. And, I thought my whole mitt was going to cut off, but information technology was just a finger. Then, at that time I was grateful, really grateful to the guard because I was merely losing a finger instead of a manus," Shin said.
A number of the most disturbing stories in the report centre on North Koreans' experiences during the great famines of the 1990s, a natural disaster that the United nations enquiry concludes was nonetheless exacerbated by state policies to divert food to citizens considered more valuable.
At the hearing in Washington i adult female, Jo Jin-hye, described conveying around her severely malnourished infant brother, who could not be breast-fed as their mother did not have enough food to lactate. "Because in that location was no nutrient, he was not able to stop crying," she told the panel. "My baby brother died in my arms because he was non able to consume. And because I was holding him so much, he thought I was his mom. Then when I was feeding him water, he was sometimes looking at me grinning at me."
Some other survivor of the famine, Kim Hyuk, became a street child – known in North korea as kotjebi, or 'flowering swallows'. He was seven when his female parent died and described being placed briefly in an orphanage, but leaving after 24 out of the 75 children starved to death. A nurse told the commission she saw many street children crushed to decease after trying to sleep in coal stores for warmth.
Around the aforementioned fourth dimension, the commission heard, the North Korean state spent almost £500m on monuments to the founder of the state, Kim Il-sung, when he died in 1994. The written report as well noted that even with stunting amongst children rife, North korea spent nearly £400m on luxury goods for top officials in 2012 lone.
Perhaps the most illustrative personal testimonies in conveying the all-pervasive attain of the state come up in the section on propaganda and official control over personal lives and thoughts. Among the evidence was of children'southward lives at school, where they were encouraged to draw merely pictures of Kim Il-sung or images "which might have pleased Kim Il-sung".
I woman giving evidence anonymously to the hearing in Tokyo recounted being encouraged to train for a public mass gymnastics brandish through the heroic example of a young boy who died after practising through the pain of an acute appendicitis and was viewed as a hero.
The report describes the primal office of the portraits of Kim Il-sung and his late son and successor, Kim Jong-il, which must be displayed in every North Korean home. One witness said his father had been sent to a political prison camp after mopping up a spilled beverage with a newspaper containing an prototype of the elderberry Kim.
To control the flow of outside information, all TV sets are registered with the state, which modifies them to ensure they receive merely approved channels. As another witness said of life in the nation: "You are brainwashed, [yous] don't know life outside. You are brainwashed from the time you know how to talk, about iv years of age, from nursery school, brainwashing through pedagogy, this happens everywhere in life, lodge, even at habitation."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/17/north-korea-human-rights-abuses-stories-un-brainwashed
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