[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 18, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1917-H1919]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
URGING PASSAGE OF RESOLUTION ADDRESSING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN NORTH
KOREA AT 59TH SESSION OF UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and
agree to the resolution (H. Res. 109) urging passage of a resolution
addressing human rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th session of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and calling on the
Government of North Korea to respect and protect the human rights of
its citizens, as amended.
The Clerk read as follows:
H. Res. 109
Whereas the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (in this
preamble referred to as ``North Korea'') is, in the words of
the United States Department of State, ``a dictatorship under
the absolute rule of the Korean Workers' Party'' that
``prohibits freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and
association . . . [and] restricts freedom of religion,
citizens' movements, and worker rights'';
Whereas according to the State Department, ``[t]he [North
Korean] Penal Code is Draconian, stipulating capital
punishment and confiscation of assets for a wide variety of
`crimes against the revolution,' including defection,
attempted defection, slander of the policies of the party or
State, listening to foreign broadcasts, writing `reactionary'
letters, and possessing reactionary printed matter'';
Whereas, as noted in the State Department Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices, the North Korean regime executes
political prisoners, opponents of the regime, some
repatriated defectors, some members of underground churches,
and others, sometimes at public meetings attended by workers,
students, and school children;
Whereas the North Korean regime subjects all its citizens
to systematic, intensive political and ideological
indoctrination in support of the cult of personality
glorifying Kim Jong Il and the late Kim Il Sung which, in the
words of the State Department, ``approaches the level of a
state religion'';
Whereas the North Korean regime divides its population into
categories, based on perceived loyalty to the Party and the
leadership, which determine access to employment, higher
education, place of residence, medical facilities, and other
resources;
Whereas the North Korean regime attempts to control all
information, artistic expression, and academic works inside
North Korea and strictly curtails freedom of speech;
Whereas the Government of North Korea holds an estimated
150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners in camps that its
State Security Agency manages through the use of forced
labor, beatings, torture, and executions, and in which many
prisoners also die from disease, starvation, and exposure;
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations of the House of
Representatives by camp survivors, camp inmates have been
used as sources of slave labor for the production of export
goods, as targets for martial arts practice, and as
experimental victims in the testing of chemical and
biological poisons;
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations by a camp survivor,
female camp prisoners are not permitted to have children and
their newborn babies are routinely and brutally killed by
camp authorities;
Whereas according to the State Department ``[g]enuine
religious freedom does not exist'' in North Korea and, in the
words of the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom, ``[t]he North Korean state severely
represses public and private religious activities'';
Whereas the United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom has highlighted ``reports that [North
Korean] officials have arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and
sometimes executed North Korean citizens who were found to
have ties with overseas Christian evangelical groups
operating across the border in China, as well as those who
engaged in such unauthorized religious activities as public
religious expression and persuasion'';
Whereas according to eyewitness testimony provided to the
Committee on International Relations in May 2002, a North
Korean prison camp survivor witnessed a group of Christian
prisoners being tortured to death in 1990 for refusing to
repudiate their faith;
Whereas more than 1,000,000 North Koreans are estimated to
have died of starvation since 1995 because of the failure of
the centralized agricultural system operated by the
Government of North Korea;
Whereas the risk of starvation and the threat of
persecution in North Korea have caused many thousands of
North Koreans to flee their homeland, primarily into the
People's Republic of China;
Whereas the Governments of the People's Republic of China
and North Korea have been conducting aggressive campaigns to
locate North Koreans who are in the People's Republic of
China without permission and to forcibly return them to North
Korea;
Whereas North Koreans who seek asylum while in the People's
Republic of China are routinely imprisoned and tortured, and
in some cases killed, after they are returned to North Korea;
and
Whereas the 59th session of the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights is scheduled to be held in Geneva,
Switzerland from March 17 to April 25, 2003: Now, therefore,
be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
(1) urges the Secretary of State to support efforts to
draft, introduce, and pass a resolution addressing human
rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th session the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights;
(2) urges all members of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights to support a resolution addressing human rights
abuses in North Korea at the 59th session of the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights; and
(3) calls on the Government of the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea to respect and protect the human rights of
its citizens, such as those recognized in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Smith) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) each
will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution.
I thank our cosponsors for being a part of this, including the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Pitts), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart), the
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms.
Ros-Lehtinen), the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter), the
gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), the gentleman from Florida
(Mr. Wexler), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the
gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Leach), the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega), the
gentleman from California (Mr. Gallegly), and the gentleman from
Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), a good cross-section of Members, a bipartisan
group, supporting House Resolution 109.
Mr. Speaker, the Government of North Korea is an historical
anachronism, a totalitarianist Stalinist regime under the control of
the Korean Workers Party, the so-called Dear Leader, or Kim Jong-Il, a
man who demands godlike reverence and enjoys a decadent, opulent
lifestyle while hundreds of thousands of children and their parents
starve to death.
His regime, his dictatorship, Mr. Speaker, is one of the worst
systematic abusers of human rights in the world today. Inside North
Korea, there are no genuine freedoms of speech, religion, or assembly.
The penal code imposes a penalty of death for a wide variety of crimes
against the revolution, including defection, attempted defection,
slander of party policy, listening to foreign broadcasts, and imagine
that, one listens to a radio show and one can be charged with crimes
against the revolution, and writing letters or possessing printed
material that is considered reactionary.
The regime maintains an extensive system, Mr. Speaker, of political
prison camps that hold an estimated 200,000 prisoners, including entire
families of those suspected of disloyalty toward the dictatorship.
As confirmed by eyewitness testimony presented before the Committee
on International Relations last year, camp conditions are horrific.
Starvation, overwork, and disease kill most of the camp inmates. Others
are used as targets for martial arts practice or as guinea pigs for
lethal tests of chemical weapons.
Christians are tortured to death for refusing to renounce their faith
in one who is greater than the Dear Leader. Female prisoners are not
allowed to bear additional children, and their newborns are routinely
and brutally killed before their eyes, usually by smothering or having
their necks broken.
[[Page H1918]]
Based on reputable reporting, Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 109
recounts the abominable conditions inside North Korea and exhorts the
dictatorship in Pyongyang to respect human rights for its citizenry.
More immediately, it urges the Department of State to support the
introduction and passage of a resolution on human rights abuses in
North Korea at the current session of the U.N. Commission on Human
Rights in Geneva.
At the State Department's suggestion, we included language that urges
other members of the Commission to support that effort. While the
Commission has censored numerous countries in recent years, North Korea
has inexplicably escaped its notice. We hope that oversight will be
corrected during this session.
I want to thank those 19 bipartisan cosponsors, particularly the
gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde); the gentleman from Iowa (Mr.
Leach), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific; and the
gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), the ranking member of the
committee, for their support.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. First, I
would like to commend my good friend, the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Smith), the vice-chairman of our committee, for his continued and
steadfast leadership on all issues relating to human rights.
The political, human rights and security situation in North Korea is
deteriorating rapidly, Mr. Speaker. It is critically important that our
Nation have a strategy for addressing the whole host of our concerns
with North Korea. We indeed have a crisis on the Korean Peninsula, and
the sooner the executive branch engages at the highest levels to deal
with that crisis, the better.
When policymakers, journalists, academics, and Members of Congress
discuss the North Korean situation, the natural focus of attention is
on North Korea's dangerous and destabilizing nuclear and missile
programs. North Korea's nuclear program poses a clear and present
danger to all civilized nations, particularly with North Korea's
increasingly advanced medium- and long-range missile program. But this
legitimate focus on North Korean security issues often obscures the
horrendous human rights situation in that country.
Mr. Speaker, the United States must develop a comprehensive approach
to North Korea, one that allows us to tackle North Korea's weapons of
mass destruction and the destruction that North Korea's leaders are
imposing on their own people by their human rights policies.
Mr. Speaker, it is evident that the world has no greater abuser of
internationally recognized human rights than the Government of North
Korea. Over the past 8 years, North Korea's leaders allowed more than 1
million citizens to starve to death rather than to implement economic
and agricultural reforms. The children who survive starvation face a
life marred by permanent physical and mental disabilities caused by
their severe and long-term malnutrition. Meanwhile, the North Korean
leader, Kim Jong-Il, imports the finest foods and luxury items for
himself and his entourage, living in the lap of luxury in Pyongyang.
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, death and destruction are only part of
North Korea's pattern of gross violations of human rights. Those
citizens who make even the mildest criticisms of the government are
immediately imprisoned, tortured, or killed. There is no freedom of
assembly, no freedom of worship, no freedom of speech, no political
freedom.
In short, Mr. Speaker, North Korea is the worst kind of totalitarian
police state. The United States and other civilized nations must make
it clear that vast improvements in North Korea's human rights situation
must be part of a dialogue with North Korea, and normalization of
relations will not occur under current circumstances.
The best way to send that signal from the international community is
for the United States to pursue a resolution critical of North Korea's
human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in
Geneva. Our resolution urges the administration to undertake this
initiative, and I strongly urge all of my colleagues to support this
resolution.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may
consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), the distinguished
chairman of our Subcommittee on Africa and a leader on issues of human
rights relevant to North Korea.
Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to
me. I rise in support of this resolution urging the United States to
work towards passage of a resolution on North Korean human rights
abuses at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
I am a cosponsor of this resolution, and I commend the Committee on
International Relations vice-chairman, the gentleman from New Jersey
(Mr. Smith), for his attention to this issue. I also want to commend
the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), for his
attention. Both of these gentlemen have spent much time, have spent
much of their careers, trying to focus this body on human rights and to
address human rights concerns around this world.
Last year, this House passed legislation, House Concurrent Resolution
213, recognizing the horrific plight of North Korean refugees who risk
their lives to escape into China. That legislation at the time included
language encouraging the Secretary of State to work to pass a
resolution regarding human rights in North Korea at the 59th session of
the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. That session began
yesterday.
Mr. Speaker, North Korea is one of the worst systemic abusers of
human rights in the world today. North Koreans are held hostage to
their so-called Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il. North Koreans are put to
death for a very wide variety of crimes against the revolution, as he
calls it, including listening to foreign broadcasts or possessing
printed material that is considered reactionary by that regime.
The prison camps in that regime hold an estimated 200,000 prisoners.
Last year, the Subcommittee on Asia held a hearing to look at the
nightmarish conditions in these North Korean prison camps. We heard
testimony from North Koreans who had escaped the camps, and these were
North Koreans in disfavor with that Stalinist regime, those who had
been convicted of ``anticriminal acts.'' They were basically political
prisoners.
As we heard their testimony, they reported to us that the inmates in
those camps were being slowly worked to death. These were work camps.
We heard from North Koreans who witnessed prisoners being gassed as
part of a chemical weapons experiment. We also heard testimony from Dr.
Norbert Vollersten, a German physician and one of the few Westerners to
spend extended time in North Korea. Dr. Vollersten has launched a
worldwide campaign to tell anyone who will listen what he witnessed in
North Korea. Dr. Vollersten has asked why the world does not hear more
and does not know more about what he describes as Nazi-type atrocities
that are occurring to North Korean people.
As we know, the North Korean regime uses food as a weapon against its
own people, apportioning and withholding resources based on citizens'
perceived loyalty to the regime. In many parts of that country, in many
counties, whole counties, whole provinces, are perceived not to be
loyal enough to receive food aid.
{time} 1500
It is largely an untold story that from 1994 to 1998 at least 2
million North Koreans perished from starvation and related diseases
while nearly 50 percent of North Korean children are malnourished to
the point that their physical and mental health is compromised.
Responsibility for this unparalleled cruelty lies squarely with the
regime of Kim Jong Il.
The upcoming session provides an opportunity, the session in the
United Nations, for the administration and others throughout the world
to focus on these horrific realities in North Korea which have
unfortunately been overlooked. And I am convinced that a
[[Page H1919]]
concerted international focus on the North Korean regime's human rights
abuses would advance stability in Northeast Asia. I am hard pressed to
see how turning away from this ugly reality is in the interest of
anyone but the North Korean regime.
Mr. Speaker, we face a critical challenge on the Korean peninsula. I
urge the passage of this timely resolution.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the
gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), my friend and our distinguished
colleague, who in the short time she has been with us has already made
significant contributions to the work of this body.
Ms. BORDALLO. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from
California (Mr. Lantos) for his very kind words and the gentleman from
New Jersey (Mr. Smith) for their leadership on human rights around the
world and in particular for introducing this resolution for which I
rise in strong support.
The Korean people are great friends of the United States and have a
proud history and a vibrant culture. I, therefore, follow with great
sadness the daily oppression suffered by the people of North Korea.
Through meeting the many Koreans that come to Guam and by having
personally traveled to Korea on many, many occasions, I have come to
appreciate how difficult life is under Kim Jong Il's dictatorship.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has
described the North Koreans as being amongst the least-free people on
this Earth with no personal freedoms or protections for their rights.
In their most recent report on the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea, the commission said that North Koreans are barely surviving
under a regime that denies basic human dignity and lets them starve
while pursuing military might and weapons of mass destruction.
Yesterday, Mr. Speaker, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights
opened its 59th session in Geneva. Human rights are perhaps the most
important issue the international community can address. Human rights
is the most important guiding principle underlying the work of the
United Nations. The commission must and should address the human rights
abuses in North Korea. It is my fervent hope that one day Koreans from
both North and South will come to visit my island of Guam in unity and
peace.
Mr. Speaker, I urge passage of House Resolution 109. I strongly
support it.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, we have no further requests for time, and I
yield back the balance of my time.
General Leave
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that
all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and
extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 109 the
bill under consideration.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Petri). Is there objection to the
request of the gentleman from New Jersey?
There was no objection.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I
may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms.
Bordallo) for her very eloquent remarks and my good friend from
California (Mr. Lantos). We need a very strong show of support by our
colleagues today, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of this resolution. The U.N.
committee is meeting as we speak. This issue must be brought so the
kind of scrutiny and, I would say, condemnation for these egregious
abuses of human rights can be brought to the fore. North Korea has a
horrific record on human rights; and it is about time the international
community said so in one loud voice: no more.
Mr. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to
support H. Res. 109 urging passage of a UN Resolution addressing human
rights in North Korea, and to commend my colleague, the Honorable Chris
Smith, a true leader on the issue, for introducing this resolution.
The human rights abuses in North Korea are a human tragedy of the
worst proportions. Kim Jong Il's prison camp system is a chilling
reminder of the methods used by totalitarian dictators to suppress
their people. Behind the veil of North Korea's closed society,
countless citizens starve to death while the regime continues to spend
its limited resources on building nuclear weapons. Public executions
are common, newborn babies of prisoners are routinely killed by being
smothered or by having their necks broken, and prisoners are used as
guinea pigs for chemical weapon experiments.
A truly disturbing tactic of the North Korean regime seeks submission
from dissidents by exacting retribution on family members. Persons who
resist the regime are punished, but their parents, siblings, and other
relatives may also be punished. Many fear for their families
particularly if they flee as refugees. According to Human Rights Watch,
one man who had suffered years in a political prison camp because of
his father's supposed disloyalty and eventual defection feared trying
to flee himself. He stated, ``I thought it would be all right to lose
my own life, but I hated to think that my act might harm my mother and
brother.''
According to the State Department there continue to be reports of
extrajudicial killings and disappearances. The penal code is draconian,
and stipulates capital punishment and confiscation of assets for a wide
variety of ``crimes against the revolution,'' including defection,
attempted defection, slander of the policies of the party or State,
listening to foreign broadcasts, writing ``reactionary'' letters, and
possessing reactionary printed matter.
I urge my colleagues to vote for this resolution which would urge the
State Department to draft, introduce, and work toward the passage of a
resolution addressing human rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th
session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. The United
Nations must highlight the atrocities of the North Korean regime.
Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, we have no further requests for
time, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) that the House suspend the rules
and agree to the resolution, H. Res. 109, as amended.
The question was taken.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of
those present have voted in the affirmative.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be
postponed.
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