Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

No More Excuses

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • No More Excuses

    NO MORE EXCUSES
    By Ed Fu, Daily Targum

    Daily Targum , Rutgers Univ. NJ
    December 5, 2006 Tuesday

    When I was learning about the Holocaust in grade school, the underlying
    subtext was always that we, as civilized human beings, could never
    let such systematic violations of human rights happen again. We look
    back and with that historical retrospective smugness ask, "How could
    those people have let that happen? How could those people have been
    so indifferent to the suffering?" We've watched "Schindler's List,"
    toured the Holocaust museum and took college seminars. We've learned
    the lessons of this singular crime. Never again, we solemnly promise
    - never again could such a crime against humanity happen. Not in our
    world. We know better.

    Or do we really?

    It is strange the United States has never intervened to stop
    genocide. It's not as if the 20th century has had a lack of genocides
    to intervene in - Armenia, Pol Pot, Bosnia, Rwanda, even Saddam Hussein
    and his gassing of the Kurds. We were acutely aware of each of them
    yet remained bystanders. At times, we even assisted. In 1988 Jesse
    Helms sponsored a bill in the Senate that would have penalized Saddam
    by cutting off the generous U.S. aid then being supplied (including
    some of the chemical weapons being used). It failed, of course, thanks
    to powerful lobbyists and the Ronald Reagan administration. So it is
    too late now to save the Kurds, or the 2 million murdered Cambodians,
    or the 800,000 Rwandan Tutsi or the 200,000 Bosnian civilians.

    But it is not yet too late for another ongoing crime against humanity
    - North Korea. In a world where certain basic freedoms are taken for
    granted, North Korea is almost alone in its shocking oppression.

    Though the country's constitution contains clauses guaranteeing freedom
    of speech and assembly, they are in practice nothing but a laughable
    farce. The government dominates the media, to the point where citizens
    are only allowed to own government-distributed radios and televisions,
    which are hardwired to accept only the official propaganda broadcasts
    (including tales of how General Kim's military genius led to North
    Korea defeating the Japanese to end World War II). Severe punishments
    are meted out for even trying to open the sealed instruments in an
    attempt to allow them to receive broadcasts from other sources. Each
    party cell head in every neighborhood and village in the country has
    been trained on how to verify that none of the seals has been broken.

    Freedom of religion is likewise officially guaranteed and likewise
    systematically trampled upon. Entire families (including children)
    have been imprisoned in horrifying slave labor camps for a single
    family member's "crime" of practicing Christianity. Owning a Bible
    is illegal - the only sanctioned houses of worship in the country
    seems to be three Christian churches located in the capital that are
    part of the official tour for foreigners, to demonstrate to the rest
    of the world the ostensible religious freedoms that North Koreans
    "enjoy." Independent reports indicate the sermons delivered, like all
    other cultural works of the country, are almost entirely political or
    devoted to Kim Jong Il, and most pastors seemed to have no interest
    or training in religion at all.

    It doesn't even seem real any more. It doesn't seem possible for a
    country in today's modern world to practice this kind of 1984-esque
    wholesale deception and personality cult. The whole thing is almost
    funny in a very dark sort of way.

    But North Korea's human rights record doesn't end there. We have known
    since 1998 that a government-induced famine, still ongoing throughout
    the country, was killing at least 800,000 people every year. Escapees
    tell heartrending stories of desperately trying to collect handfuls
    of fertilizer leaking out of trains in order to sell on the black
    market; when that fails, they have no choice but to turn to eating
    tree bark to survive. The massive amounts of foreign aid supplied to
    North Korea never seems to get to these people. One refugee reports
    when UN ships arrive, the military dresses as civilians and comes to
    claim everything.

    Moreover, vicious prison gulags, similar to those constructed by
    Stalin and Mao, routinely use torture, starvation, rape, murder and
    forced labor and hold several hundred thousand inmates; many more
    have perished over the years. Recent refugees have even told us the
    government operates concentration camps, complete with suffocating
    gas chambers and sadistic experimentation (including the effects of
    poisoned food upon prisoners). And of course, North Korea is developing
    nuclear weapons.

    We blithely talk of the Holocaust as something that cannot happen in
    today's world because we know better. We smugly say to ourselves that
    if something like it happened today, we would undoubtedly intervene
    to prevent yet another humanitarian catastrophe. But something like
    it does happen today. While it is no longer entirely clear what
    differentiates Kim Jong Il's rule from that of Adolf Hitler's,
    we continue to do little more than impose economic sanctions
    and indifferently hold talks with their legendarily irrational
    leadership. Do you think those sanctions would have been an adequate
    response to the Holocaust? Would future generations think them an
    adequate response to Kim Jong Il?

    During World War II, Arthur Koestler described the frustrated few
    who spoke up against Nazi atrocities as "Screamers." The Screamers
    succeeded in reaching listeners for a moment, Koestler wrote, only to
    watch them shake themselves "like puppies who have got their fur wet"
    and return to the blissful place of ignorance and uninvolvement. "You
    can convince them for an hour," Koestler noted, but then "their mental
    half-defense begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity
    has returned."

    Surely we cannot give Kim as much reign as we did Hitler. Never once
    have we shown that we have learned anything from the horrors of Nazi
    Germany. And if we do not act soon, North Korea will become another
    opportunity wasted, another crime against humanity left unaddressed,
    another Rwanda or Cambodia or Armenia. The ongoing suffering of
    millions will be reduced to just another historical statistic. What
    will future generations think of this period in American history,
    where we calmly stood by ignoring some of the most horrifying acts
    against humanity? How many more victims we will allow Kim Jong Il to
    claim before we cry out "never again!" - and mean it?
Working...
X