Increasing Number of North Koreans Listen to Overseas Radio Programs

Increasing Number of North Koreans Listen to Overseas Radio Programs

By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – North Koreans appear to be better informed than ever despite living in the most reclusive country in the world.  Although there is no data on the exact number of North Koreans listening to overseas radio broadcasts, evidence has shown that the number is quite high.

Voice of America (VOA) has been broadcasting to North Korea since 1942 and Radio Free Asia (RFA) began its services in 1997.  More than a dozen radio stations from overseas, including the United States, South Korea and Japan, currently broadcast to North Korea.  In addition, North Korean defectors have founded three radio stations, including the Free North Korea Radio. 

Although smuggling news out of North Korea is risky, these news media employ stringers and underground informants in North Korea who have access to cell phones or those who can send interviews through China.  Almost 1,000 North Koreans use cell phones connected to Chinese networks and send stories about the food shortage and famine to Kim Jong-il’s health via text messages, photos and audio files. 

Consequently, there is information flowing in and out of the hermit kingdom. 

Based on the data South Korean researchers have collected, over 20% of North Koreans regularly listen to banned broadcasts.  North Koreans will either jam their government radios or buy smuggled radios from China.  The research also showed that nearly all of the listeners then shared the news they heard on the radio with family and friends.  Defectors have said that one of the leading motivations to defect came from listening to foreign radio broadcasts.

Furthermore, U.S.’s human rights envoy for North Korea, Robert King, has promised to increase funding for North Korean broadcasting.  Currently, VOA and RFA broadcast only five hours a day, and the stations operated by defectors run on a tight budget.

These may be signs of future demise of North Korea’s monopoly over information and media control.  However, control of information flow may be even more tightly controlled as the current North Korean government prepares for a regime change from Kim Jong-il to his son.
For more information, please see:

Business Week – North Korea Open Radio Prompts Wonder About Riches Over Border – 31 March 2010

NYT – Nimble Agencies Sneak News Out of North Korea – 24 January 2010

Press Reference – North Korea

WSJ – North Korea’s Radio Waves of Resistance – 16 April 2010

Kidnapped Peacekeepers Okay

By Kylie M Tsudama

Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Four peacekeepers who were abducted last week are okay.  Negotiations for their release are underway.

“We spoke to our staff today by phone,” said Mohamed Yonis, the joint African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Deputy Joint Special Representative.  “They are reported to be unharmed.  We are calling for the immediate and unconditional release of our peacekeepers.”

Added UNAMID spokesman Nouredine Mezni, “We are doing our utmost to secure their release.  The Sudanese authorities know the identity of the kidnappers but they want to make sure their release takes place in the best possible conditions.”

Four UNAMID police advisors were kidnapped on Sunday, 11 April 2010 while on the way back to their private quarters, a 4.3 mile trek.  The two men and two women were leaving Nyala, South Darfur, the center of several humanitarian operations in Darfur and the second largest city in Sudan.

According to Jibril Bukhari Abbas, head of the People’s Democratic Struggle Movement (PDSM), one of the PDSM members kidnapped the peacekeepers without instruction.  He said PDSM entered into peace talks with the government last week.

“[The abductor] was unaware of an agreement which was concluded between the government and the People’s Democratic Struggle Movement which has joined the peace march,” said Bukhari.

This abduction is reported to be “the largest single abduction of foreigners” in Darfur.  It happened as the first competitive election in more than twenty years was to take place in Sudan.

“We want one billion Sudanese pounds (400,000 US dollars) but that is not the most important.  We want to show the international community that security conditions in Darfur do not allow for elections,” said Ibrahim al-Dukki.

Abductions in the region have ebbed after a year-long wave of abductions.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called this “a new and deeply troubling development in Darfur, with the potential to undermine the efforts of the international community.”

The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government.  According to the UN, at least 300,000 have been killed and more than 2.5 million have been displaced.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Peacekeepers Kidnapped in Darfur ‘In Good Health’ – 16 April 2010

AP – UN Mission in Darfur: Abducted Peacekeepers are OK – 16 April 2010

UN News Centre – Darfur: UN – African Union Mission Makes Contact with Four Abducted Peacekeepers – 16 April 2010

First Witnesses Testify in Karadzic Trial

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch, Europe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – On April 13, 2010, ICTY prosecution brought forth its first witness in the trial against former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. 

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in July of 2008 in Belgrade, Serbia, after spending years in hiding. He faces charges for crimes committed in Bosnia Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995, including eleven counts of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Karadzic was the alleged mastermind of the bloody forty-four month siege of Sarajevo, and the massacre of roughly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the UN “safe haven” of Srebrenica in 1995.

The first witness called on by the prosecution was Ahmet Zulic, who testified about his six month detention in the Manjaca camp in northern Bosnia in 1992. When the prosecution showed a video from the Manjaca camp Zulic recognized himself among the inmates who were stitting on the floor in one big room.

The notorious Manjaca camp was used by Serb forces to detain roughly 4,000 people, primarily Bosniaks and Croats, in 1992.

Zulic told of his capture in the area of Sanksi Most in June 1992. After a period of detention and torture in garages in Betonirka, Zulic was transferred in the back of a tarpaulin covered truck to the Manjaca camp. Zulic explained that some of the prisoners died on the way to the camp.

“It was hot and we could not breathe . . . I [had] to drink my own urine since I was thirsty.”

While in the Manjaca camp, Zulic was severely beaten. He remains disabled today. His injuries included seven damaged vertebrae, fractured ribs, a broken finger, and smashed-in teeth. Zulic also recounted how he was forced to watch the killing of twenty men who had been forced to dig their own graves.

He said: “I am physically invalid. But I also suffer in a different way . . . I am going through it again, and again and again.” He added: “I have nightmares very often . . . I very frequently dream of people who were killed beside me or were dying beside me. I had one last night.”

Before Zulic was questioned, Judge O-Gon Kwon apologized to Zulic for the fact that he had to come to the Hague three times before finally taking the stand. The trial was officially started in October, 2009 when the prosecution made its initial statements, but was postponed numerous times in the following months due to boycotts and appeals made by Karadzic. Karadzic did not deliver the defense’s opening statement until this past March, and his final appeal was just rejected earlier this month.

The Court also warned Karadzic to keep his questioning relevant several times during the cross-examination, and warned him about the way in which he questioned Zulic.

Karadzic sought to discredit the Zulic by referring to him as “well trained by the prosecution,” referring to the fact that Zulic had been called in by prosecution to testify in the three earlier trials, including the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

Zulic, a Muslim, testified that Serb captors had carved a cross into his chest while they tortured him. During the cross-examination Karadzic accused Zulic of lying about the torture.  At one point Zulic pulled open his shirt on the witness stand, pointed to his chest, and told the bench:

“Right here I have a cross carved in my skin. You can see the cross carved on my chest.”

The second prosecution witness to take the stand, Sulejman Crncalo, recalled his wife’s death in the Markale Massacre in Sarajevo on August 28, 1995.  Crncalo testified that his wife had left their home that morning to find powdered milk for the children. When she did not return by eleven in the morning as planned, Crncalo left to look for her. He described how he came upon the bloody scene at Markale, where Serb forces under Karadzic’s command had shot missiles into the busy market.

He said: “I arrived and saw blood all over the street, pieces of bodies, clothes, shoes . . . The balustrade on the side was covered in blood, like somebody painted it red.”

Crncalo wept as he described how he later discovered that his wife had been killed in the attack, and how he found her body in the hospital mortuary.

Karadzic, who is serving as his own defense lawyer, started his cross examination of Crncalo by expressing his condolences for Crncalo’s loss, and stating that he, Karadzic, would establish who was to blame for the massacre.

Karadzic claims that the killings at the Markale market were not committed by Bosnian Serb forces. However, in its ruling in the case of Dragomir Milosevic, the ICTY confirmed that the Bosnian Serbs were, in fact, responsible for the attack on the market.

Karadzic has denied all charges, and in his opening statement to the ICTY in March he claimed that the Srebrenica massacre was a “myth” and that other atrocities were “staged” by Muslims themselves. He also described Serb efforts against the Bosnians as “just and holy.”

 The prosecution’s witness list includes ten more people slated to take the stand, including victims of the Bosnian war, former UN military and civilian officials, and two protected witnesses whose names are being kept secret.

 For more information, please see:

AP – Serbs carved cross on my chest: witness tells Karadzic trial – 14 April 2010

Balkan Insight – Witness Describes Markale Massacre at Karadzic Trial – 14 April 2010

Radio Netherlands Worldwide – First witness testifies against Karadzic – 14 April 2010

Balkan Insight – FirstProsecution Witness Testifies Against Karadzic – 13 April 2010

Radio Free Europe – Karadzic Trial Resumes; First Witness Called – 13 April 2010

Sadr Orders Militia to Stand Down

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his followers to cease hostilities, ending six days of violence in Iraq.  Sadr directed his Mahdi Army to cooperate with the Iraqi government’s efforts to maintain security, but did not tell them to give up their weapons.  In exchange for an end to the violence, Sadr demanded that his followers be released and given amnesty.  Sadr also used the statement as a rallying cry against the US forces in Iraq, calling them the “armies of darkness.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki targeted Sadr’s followers in an offensive launched last week aimed at improving security in the country.  The Maliki government hoped to weaken Sadr’s influence, both politically and militarily, but the plan appears to have backfired.  The offensive has been widely seen as a failure.  It is now Maliki, not Sadr, who appears to be politically and militarily weak.

The cease-fire itself shows Sadr’s strength.  Before he launched the offensive, Maliki claimed that there would be no negotiations.  After Sadr offered the ceasefire, a Maliki spokesman described Sadr’s statement as a “positive step.”  Instead of weakening Sadr’s influence, the recent violence has allowed him to solidify his base, both politically and militarily.

For more information, please see:

Time – How Moqtada al-Sadr Won in Basra – 1 April 2008

Reuters – Baghdad Green Zone Hit by Mortars – 31 March 2008

Washington Post – Sadr Tells His Militia To Cease Hostilities – 31 March 2008

Two Officials in China Sentenced to Death

By M.E. Dodge
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

CHONGQING, China – Wen Qiang, a 55-year old former Chinese police chief, was sentenced to death in a gang corruption case for taking about $2.4 million from Chongqing crime syndicates in return for his promise to provide legal protection. Within 24 hours of Wen’s sentencing, a 54-year old banker, Wang Yi, was also sentenced to death for taking bribes.

Wen’s story has been the biggest in a series of related gang prosecutions in the south-western city of Chongqing. Wang’s tale, though a bit less sensational, has caused a similar reaction now that his conviction and punishment have been handed down.

In Wen’s case, back in August 2009, investigators were looking for 469 suspects from 14 different gangs. Even then, when Wen was acting as the director of Chongqing’s judicial bureau and a former police chief in the city, he was under internal investigation for suspicion of protecting criminals. In late summer of 2009 when intense investigation was instigated, Liu Guanglei, a member of the standing committee of the city’s Party Committee and team leader of the operation, told the Chongqing Evening News that gangs were involved in “prostitution, gambling, drugs and guns”, and that their crimes included murder and kidnapping.

Wen was detained last August and accused of protecting gang operations masterminded by his sister-in-law, Xie Caiping, 46, known as the “godmother” of the Chongqing underworld. Xie was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment in November for running illegal casinos and bribing government officials.

 The death ruling by the Chongqing No 5 intermediate people’s court passed sentence on Wen. When testifying about the money and its origin, Wen told the court much of the money he had accepted was for “birthday and new year” gifts. In addition to being found guilty of taking bribes, Wen was also found guilty of raping a university student in 2007 and 2008, according to a news report by Chongqing News. Wen remained silent throughout the trial on Wednesday and kept a straight face when the death sentence was delivered. He can appeal the sentence, but it is not likely that the court will reverse.

However, Wen was not alone – the court found a ring of corrupt Chongqing officials. More than 3,000 people, including 14 high-ranking government and police officials, have been arrested. Chongqing’s Communist party boss, Bo Xilai, said last month the crackdown was not over, and 500 or 600 cases “still haven’t been broken.” Even Wen’s wife was sentenced. She received eight years in prison for taking bribes in exchange for protecting gang members, according to Chongqing News.

In a comment to China Daily, Pan Jinggui, a law professor at the Chongqing-based Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said, “The verdict has sounded an alarm to all police officials – cherish, don’t abuse, the powers given to you.” He went on to say that, “It also reflects the government’s determination to fight corruption and has restored the public’s confidence in the judiciary.”

For more information, please see:

The Guardian – Former Chinese police chief sentenced to death in gangland case – 17 April 2010

The Times of India – 2 top officials get death over graft in China – 17 April 2010

China Daily – Chongqing hails death for biggest fish– 17 April 2010