It is not every day that you meet a person who has had all their fingernails pulled out, their bottom teeth bashed out, and has been hung with their arms tied behind their back for up to 12 hours, their feet suspended above the ground and their chest bursting from the strain. Nor is it often that we meet someone who has witnessed people suffering such extreme starvation that they resorted to fighting over bits of corn in dogs' faeces. I have, however, spent the past two days taking two North Korean defectors around London. They had both been jailed in North Korea's infamous gulags - and, remarkably, survived to tell their story.
Both The Times and The Guardian have run pieces today about Guang il-Jung and Lee Sung Ae, after a visit to London organised by Christian Solidarity Worldwide in which they met senior officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth office, Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister David Lidington MP and the Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Tony Baldry. They also addressed a meeting in Parliament hosted by Baroness Cox and the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.
The courage these two individuals have shown in escaping, at huge risk, and telling their story is extraordinary. And the examples they gave of the North Korean regime's brutality are truly unbelievable. Lee Sung Ae said that among her fellow prisoners was a person who was jailed simply because he had rolled a home-made cigarette using a bit of used newspaper which happened to have a small photograph of the "Dear Leader", Kim Jong-il on it. She said food rations in the gulag were so bad that at least 30 people died every day, and the survivors resorted to opening the mouths of corpses to see if there was any unswallowed left-over food in them. When Guang il-Jung went into the gulag, he weighed 71 kilos. When he came out, he was 34 kilos. For the very sick, veterinaries, not medical doctors, were assigned to provide treatment. When asked how a vet could treat a human being, prisoners were told "you're not human beings, you're animals".
If anyone ever asks why politicians in this country should take an interest in human rights in other countries, surely these stories provide an answer. It is in our national interests to promote freedom and human rights, but it is also morally imperative. And if you want more evidence, in addition to reading today's Times and Guardian articles, look at the report commissioned by former Czech President Vaclav Havel, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and written by international law firm DLA Piper. Or David Hawk's Hidden Gulag. Or CSW's North Korea: A Case to Answer, A Call to Act
The truly barbaric treatment of the North Korean people by the regime that rules it cannot be tolerated by anyone with an ounce of humanity. The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea, in several astonishingly outspoken reports, has described the situation as "abysmal" and "grave", called for the issue of human rights violations in North Korea to be "taken up .. at the pinnacle" of the UN system, and has urged the international community to "mobilise the totality of the United Nations to promote and protect human rights in the country ... and an end to impunity". At the very least, the UN should establish a commission of inquiry to investigate what surely are crimes against humanity in North Korea.
In addition, efforts to talk to the North Korean regime should be increased and intensified. The free world should take the same approach with North Korea as it took with the Soviet Union - a 'Helsinki-style' process of dialogue, with human rights firmly on the table. This has been admirably pursued by Lord Alton and Baroness Cox, and their report Carpe Diem, from their second visit to Pyongyang, deserves serious attention. Efforts to improve the flow of information to ordinary North Korean people, through radio broadcasts for example, and cultural and educational exchanges, should be increased.
We cannot change the whole world, but we can play our part in being a voice for freedom, democracy and basic human rights. We cannot do everything, but we must not do nothing. To stay silent in the face of such crimes against humanity - in North Korea and in too many other countries as well - is to acquiesce. Those who advocate a foreign policy which does not place human rights at its centre are not 'realists', they are accomplices to crime. I am proud that in opposition, the Conservative Party has emphasised consistently that human rights will be at the heart of foreign policy, and I look forward to seeing that translated into action in government. And as we consider what to do about North Korea - and, for that matter, Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan and other oppressive regimes - let the words of a North Korean former prisoner ring in our ears: "Why do people talk so much about the Holocaust, saying 'we must never forget' and spending money on programmes to ensure this, yet they say and do nothing about the similarthings that are happening right now?” Winston Churchill fought fascism, Margaret Thatcher fought communism, and William Wilberforce fought slavery. We must follow in that Conservative tradition, and be the freedom fighters of today.
