[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 94 (Wednesday, July 19, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H6565-H6566]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1915
                        NORTH KOREAN ATROCITIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Toomey). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on behalf of the 
numerous individuals being forgotten in the negotiations between the 
United States and the hard-line dictatorship in North Korea, those 
200,000 plus people who suffer horrifying hardships in the prison camps 
throughout North Korea.
  Despite the fact that the leaders of North Korea refuse to admit that 
these concentration camps exist, they are real. Individuals that I have 
met with who have escaped from these camps have said that they want the 
world to know of the evil that is perpetrated there, even against 
children.
  One young man that I met with was imprisoned at the age of 10 because 
his grandfather was arrested, so they imprisoned the whole family. The 
North Korean regime incarcerates three generations of a family due to 
one generation's crime. What type of government imprisons a 10-year-old 
boy for his grandfather's crime? Certainly not a civilized one.
  Another woman I met with described the terrible torture she endured 
because she was honest and would not embezzle material goods for her 
boss. As a result, her boss concocted false crimes, she was arrested, 
taken to a prison camp and routinely tortured to the point of losing 
consciousness. As soon as she lost consciousness, the security 
officials would pour water on her face, revive her and begin the 
torture process over again, all of this for 14 months. Then she was 
sentenced to 13 years in a resocialization camp.
  Let me read some excerpts of testimony from torture survivors and 
escapees regarding the horrendous pain and suffering at the hands of 
this brutal and repressive regime, a regime that our administration is 
now looking to appease.

[[Page H6566]]

  ``Officers treated us like animals. They never explained to us what 
to do but communicated with the prisoners by whipping, kicking and 
cursing. While prisoners were being beaten, they couldn't stop working 
or look back at the officers. If a prisoner moaned or tried to avoid 
getting hit, she was put into solitary confinement, the worst 
punishment in prison. The solitary confinement cell was only high 
enough to allow a person to sit on the floor. Concrete thorns stuck out 
of the walls so the prisoner could not lean against them. The person 
could only sit and not move for many days. If prisoners were consigned 
to solitary confinement during the winter, their legs became 
paralyzed.''
  ``The different forms of torture are too numerous to recount. 
Sometimes they put a wooden stick with sharp edges behind my knees, 
make me kneel, and then trampled my body with their heavy boots. At 
other times, they would hang me by the shackles on my wrists, high 
enough so that I was forced to stand on tiptoe. At night water would 
fill the solitary cell up to my stomach, depriving me of any sleep. 
During the long hours underwater my body would gradually swell up, 
making it difficult for me to keep my balance. If I fell, the guards 
kicked me until I scrambled up again in extreme pain and fatigue.''
  ``The prisoners in the export factory were treated even worse than 
those in the other factories. Our days were a series of unendurable 
labor. Getting kicked and slapped was common. The female prisoners got 
used to an officer's kick or slap on the face. After a few years of 
little food, no sunshine, constant beatings and demanding work, 
prisoners began to lose the strength in their backbones. As the spine 
weakened, ligaments started popping out at the back of their necks. The 
prisoners became ugly like beasts. The export production was the fruit 
of unbelievable human abuse. These exports went to Japan, to Poland, to 
France.''
  I would ask, do we want to participate in this as well? Let me end 
with this quote:
  ``When pregnant women came to prison, they were forced to abort their 
babies. Poison was injected into the babies cuddled in their mother's 
wombs. After the injection, the pregnant woman suffered tremendous pain 
until the babies were stillborn about 24 hours later. Medical officers 
walked around the pregnant women and kicked their swollen bellies if 
they screamed or moaned.''
  Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on. These are a few excerpts of people 
that I have met. We must not forget these people. We must fight to stop 
the painful, horrifying torture and the other human rights abuses the 
North Korean people are enduring at the hands of the brutal 
dictatorship ruling that country.

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