http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/ ... 50427.html

North Korea gassing its citizens: rights group
Last Updated Wed, 27 Apr 2005 08:30:27 EDT
CBC News

WASHINGTON - A human rights organization known for tracking down Nazi war criminals is taking aim at North Korea, saying the regime uses deadly nerve gas on its own citizens and may even be operating experimental gas chambers.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent American rabbi Abraham Cooper, the centre's associate dean, to Asia to investigate the reports, which the North Korean regime denies.

Cooper interviewed a number of former North Korean officials who have since defected.

One man, a 55-year-old chemist, claimed he was in charge of an experiment to test the effect of deadly nerve gas on political prisoners.

"He said he was involved in the killing of two people – one who did not expire for 2½ hours, and the second didn't die till 3½ hours had passed," Cooper told CBC for a documentary airing Wednesday night on the radio program Dispatches.

Other defectors told him of "mass starvations, gruesome experimentations, and yes, as we now are beginning to learn and to confirm, gas chambers," he said.

Soon Ok Lee, a North Korean now living in the United States, said she spent years in a political prison camp before escaping.

"When I was in jail, there was at least once or twice in the prison camp, chemical testing on humans that I witnessed," she said.

Crimes against humanity alleged

Cooper said the Simon Wiesenthal Centre intends to pursue action against the North Korean regime, which it says might be guilty of crimes against humanity.

"We're not talking about mass murder, utilizing these gas chambers to mass-murder huge numbers of people," he said. "But on the other hand, you have in the North Korean regime folks who have learned from Hitler, from Stalin."

During the Second World War, Hitler's regime killed an estimated six million Jews, many of them in gas chambers. More than 10 million are estimated to have died as a result of Stalin's collectivization policies and political purges in the 1930s.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded in 1977 by a Holocaust survivor to preserve the memory of those killed by taking action against racism and genocide around the world, as well as helping bring Nazi war criminals to justice.

"We are here today to put the 'N' back into 'Never again,'" said Cooper.

On Thursday, human rights activists in Asia, Europe and North America plan to stage demonstrations in a number of cities to draw attention to alleged rights violations in North Korea.

They are calling the effort "North Korea Freedom Day."

what an awful, awful place. hopefully they find natural gas deposits there some time soon.

Wow, if they had oil we would help them!

Wow I never thought something like this could happen in North Korea, we all know it's a country famous for respecting human rights.

From other things I've seen and read I'm inclined to believe this is true.

If so, lets hope the UN does a better job for the North Koreans than they did for the Rwandans.

Gassing his own citizens? Potential nuclear weapons? Dictator threatening U.S. citizens?

I've heard all of this before.

Since they don't, we might let the UN help.

Wait... I thought we could only act on proof, and not allegations?

Yeah! Good thing there was that big press conference with Rumsfeld standing on piles of WMD's!

Or maybe if they didn't have nookular weapons and the abilty to kill tens of thousands of American soldiers, millions of South Koreans, and Millions of Japanese withen minutes we would help them. Not to mention I am completly ignoring the China factor.

[drive by debater]The intellect makes my stomach hurt.

For those making the oil jokes, tell me. Since the Iraq war, have your gas prices gone down? Has OPEC levelled off their barrel increases? Or am I confused when we talk about ANWAR?

For those who think the qualifying factor for war is "do they have something we want", explain Vietnam. Explain Korea. Explain World War II. And then tell me, what did we bring back?

Now, anyone who wants a serious discussion on North Korea, you'd best wait. Because I think the brains behind whatever is going to happen over there is actually in another country, and the plan will be drawn up by the UN when diplomacy fails. And don't think for a second our next great war won't be with Asia. You can't stomach a few thousand dead in Iraq, just you wait.

[/drive by debater]

Poor guys

Without getting into the whole "we let it happen" debate. Wasn't American soil actually attacked in WWII before we declared war? Still, I doubt that the "if they had oil" jokes are commentary on war back to the Declaration of Independence.



OK, what DID turn out the way it was supposed to in Iraq?

Let's see:

Hussein boys - DEAD

Hussein - CAPTURED

Hussein's regime - GONE

Democratic government on its way to being established. Any more questions?

How can you possibly make an assertion one way or another? Since we don't know what the situation would be like had we not gone into Iraq, we can't compare the current situation to anything. For all we know, oil prices would be even higher than they are today had the war not occurred.

Also, even if the gas prices have not gone down, it's pretty irrelevant from what our intentions were. Our intentions could very well have been to increase our own supply of oil but it just might not have panned out. For example, we can both agree that the administration greatly underestimated the amount of time and resources (i.e. financial) that went into this war.

So apparently I am confused about how you can assume from the outcome that our intentions had nothing to do with oil. The outcome is completely irrelevant.

(To beat the dead horse even further.. if we hadn't captured Hussein, would you be saying, "For those saying that we went into Iraq for Saddam.. Look, we didn't even capture him. Therefore it wasn't our intention."? Okay, I'm done. heh)

Why didn't we do this to Korea, i.e. someone we know for a fact deserves it?

- AS

Yeah, that's sort of my point. Everyone posting in this thread prior to me is making the point that we should go into NK based on the reasons we went into Iraq. Now, you guys have always tried to delegitimize the war effort in Iraq because no weapons have been found. Constantly people say that Bush did it just for shits and giggles, and for oil, and he made up the WMD thing, or he acted on intelligence with limited proof of its existance. In the buildup to the war, you guys insisted that the administrative processes in regards to inspections be fulfilled. War was only an end measure after all the proper administrative steps were taken. So why should NK be any different to you guys? You hear that they're gassing their citizens, and we should just jump to. Technically, shouldn't we let the UN in there and inspect for thirteen years before we do anything?

- just_b

Do you really wanna open up this jar? Because I've got piles and piles of articles about the immense amount of good that has come about directly in Iraq. Articles that don't even take into account the ripple effect democracy in the middle east has caused following the war.

- just_b

I'm sorry, but this comment right here shows that you know absolutely nothing about the war on terrorism.

- stonecrest

Okay, I'll play this game. The "Let's Watch Stonecrest Try and Make Like All that Happened Following the War was Bad and Evil Game." Hey, where is IEB? Let's get him in there too. No offense Mr. Stonecrest, but that is why your side really looks ridiculous enlight of the war. Because all you say is stuff like this. "Well the war happened, so how do you know that this or that wouldn't have happened otherwise." It's really trite, and a horrible debating technique.

Why don't you examine what your side said before the war, and justify that with the results that have actually occured. Seriously, I could say something that effect in ever single argument on this board.

- stonecrest

Look, we don't control Iraq's oil now. In fact, Iraq doesn't even control Iraq's flow of oil out of the country. OPEC controls all the oil in all of those nations. OPEC dictates and strictly defines how much oil output Iraq has in any given month. OPEC dictates the world. Not George Bush.

- just_b

Do you really wanna open up this jar? Because I've got piles and piles of articles about the immense amount of good that has come about directly in Iraq. Articles that don't even take into account the ripple effect democracy in the middle east has caused following the war.
[/quote]

Fair enough. I don't want the ensuing tit for tat post war that will be inevitable.



I wasn't commenting on the war on terrorism. I was answering the question, "Why did WWII happen if we only go to war when a country has something we want?" So, that comment shows that the war on terror was the furthest thing on my mind.

I don't think any of those comments are an endorsement for war. I think every one of those is mocking the Bush administration, who when faced with the lack of WMDs claimed that the war was worth it because Sadaam tortured his people. This was obviously not true because we haven't gone after NK despite their epitomizing every reason that this administration gave for going to war against Iraq.