Are There Current Concentration Camps in The 21st Century?
Barely a decade on from the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations Basic Assembly in 1948, the extremely atrocities and crimes against humanity that precipitated its creation have been replicated in kind and ferocity in a nation of which small is written or recognized about: North Korea. Yes, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the so-referred to as hermit country occupying the northern half of a peninsula on which the 1st skirmishes of the Cold War were played out to a stalemate an armistice which confirmed its ultimate division along the 38th parallel into two parts: North and South Korea. Nevertheless, whilst the South has prospered, embraces a degree of openness and modernity and has evolved into a comparatively cost-free society, the North on the other hand has developed into one particular of the most oppressive and repressed societies exactly where its founding leader, Kim Il Sung is venerated as a quasi-deity and where any infringement or perceived crime against his ideology is punished with brutality and inhumane treatment method the most atrocious of which is incarceration in a method of political concentration camps reported to hold up to 300,000 prisoners in total.
These concentration camps are also reported to have been made in the 1950s and by all accounts nevertheless exist and are expanding right now in the 21st century. It is particularly disheartening that despite the outrage and widespread indignation that followed the uncovering of the worst excesses of the Holocaust in Central Europe, in the following decade, a almost comparable method of incarceration was secretly established 5000 or so miles away in North Korea. The camps, initially built to home prisoners of war (South Korean mainly), now hold an quantity of arbitrarily detained prisoners ranging from the political (perceived traitors to the regime, collaborators with the earlier colonial Japanese regime, allies of the Soviets (preceding occupants of North Korea), victims of army purges, repatriated defectors and religious leaders) to the seemingly mundane (those who do not take proper care of photographs of Kim Il Sung, listen to South Korean radio and several other seemingly trivial offences). In addition, as a outcome of a policy promulgated by Kim Il Sung identified as guilt-by-association (yeon-jwa-je), up to 3 generations of the family members of the offenders are frequently forcibly incarcerated along with him/her. So, grandparents, parents, siblings and children are rounded up frequently without any understanding of which of their loved ones members has erred and sent to prison camps with out trial or any judicial procedure (the word of a Korean Workers’ Party official is regarded as sufficient). The justification for this, is a bid to supposedly eliminate the bad seed of the offender from the rest of the population.
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Amnesty International, amongst other NGOs has recently published satellite images which detail the extent and escalating expanse of four of the six acknowledged concentration camps in North Korea. The North Korean government imposes stringent access restrictions on its land borders, territorial waters and its airspace, nonetheless it has no jurisdiction over the miles of area above the Karman line (the limit of controlled airspace) in which commercial satellites can roam and scan with freedom, capturing aerial views of the secretive camps situated in North Korea’s expansive mountain ranges.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/pictures-reveal-scale-north-korean-political-prison-camps-2011-05-03
In the absence of openness and the persistent intransigence of the DPRK government with regards to UN resolutions and statements on this concern, these images coupled with quite a few corroborative testimonies offer the only trustworthy evidence of the human rights abuses regularly denied by the North Korean government. From these testimonies, proof has been acquired of the use of torture cells, situations of permanent semi-starvation (reminiscent of Soviet gulags), public executions, forced labour (predominantly mining and farming), little one labour, prisoner brutality, forced abortions, baby killings amongst other human rights abuses. According to former detainees at the infamous prison camp at Yodok, prisoners are forced to function in circumstances approaching slavery and are often subjected to torture and other cruel, inhumane, and degrading remedy. Most stark of all are the testimonies (from former prisoners and prison guards in Camp 22) obtained by the BBC and the Guardian in 2004 confirming the existence of gas chambers and experimental facilities in which biological and chemical weapons appear to be tested on inmates.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/01/korea.shtml
The International Community (post-2nd Globe War) with all the best intentions hoped the formation of the UN and the adoption of the UDHR would make certain long term international peace and security and to a specific extent, 60 many years on it has largely succeeded in reaching this. But on grave intranational issues such as human rights abuses occurring inside a UN member state such as North Korea is, its Conventions and instruments of enforcement have proved toothless and benign.
This sentiment was articulated succinctly by a question posed by a former North Korean prisoner quoted in a Christian Solidarity Globally (an NGO highlighting the persecution of Christians in North Korea) journal, reproduced under:
“Why do men and women talk about the Holocaust saying ‘we ought to never ever forget’ and commit income on programmes to ensure this, nevertheless they say and do absolutely nothing about the equivalent points that are taking place correct now?”
Despair and resignation are the most organic reactions to one individual’s powerlessness to effect an improvement in the circumstances of fellow human beings, but I am minded to recall as a counterweight, the eminent Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, Elie Weisel who once stated: “There may possibly be instances when we are powerless to avoid injustice, but there need to never ever be a time when we fail to protest”
Could also verify the “Saving The Jews” video as featured in Schindler’s List, here’s the hyperlink for it: www.youtube.com
Video Rating: four / five
Question by animals123: Concentration Camps?
I have a background project which is about concentration camps in Globe War two. Every single camp has three pages and I need to write some details about them. I want at least six camps and I made the decision the 3 of them. They will be
Auswichz,
Bergen Belsen,
Treblinka
Do you know any other powerful camps? and can you give me hyperlinks?
Greatest solution:
Answer by ✿Flobot✿
Attempt “Sobibor”
[Here are some hyperlinks]
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Sobibor.html
http://www.cympm.com/sobibor.html
http://www.actionreinhardcamps.org/
The final link also lists other death camps. I uncover this distinct death camp to be very pronounced to me simply because I watched a film about the genuine escape of a group of prisoners. It was extremely moving.
[Escape from Sobibor] is the title of the film.
Give your solution to this question under!
Connected Concentration Camps Posts
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has all the info you’ll ever need.
http://www.ushmm.org/
Auschwitz is formally called Auschwitz-Birkenau and there’s a camp called Dachau that seems to be mentioned a lot.