North Korea

The plight of a North Korean Refugee named Hyeonseo Lee

I attempted to post a video here so if the video doesn't appear 

Here's the link it's important that you guys watch this

It puts the plight of North Koreans in perspective.

http://youtu.be/JJiDGcQbLrA

Hyeonseo Lee was born in North Korea and left for China in 1997. She now lives in South Korea and is an activist for North Korea refugees. Lee spoke at the TED2013 conference in February. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas worth spreading" which it makes available through talks posted on its website.

(CNN) - When I was young, I thought my country was the best on the planet. I grew up singing a song called "Nothing to Envy." I felt very proud. I thought my life in North Korea was normal, even though when I was 7 years old, I saw my first public execution.

My family was not poor, and I had never experienced hunger. But after my mother read me a letter from a coworker's sister who said that her family was dying of hunger, I realized that something was very wrong in my country. A huge famine hit North Korea in the mid to late 1990s, and I began to see suffering, hunger and death around me.

I can't reveal the details of how I left North Korea, but I can say that during the dark years of the famine when I was a young girl, I went alone to China to live with distant relatives. I thought I would be separated from my family for a short time. I could never have imagined that it would take 14 years for my family to live together again.

Since North Korean refugees are considered illegal migrants in China, I lived in constant fear that my identity would be revealed and I would be repatriated (deported) to a horrible fate back in North Korea.

One day, my worst nightmare came true when I was caught by the Chinese police and brought to the police station for interrogation. Someone had accused me of being North Korean, so they tested my Chinese language abilities and asked me tons of questions. I thought my life was over, but I managed to control all the emotions inside of me and answered their questions. They let me go. It was a miracle!

After 10 years of hiding my identity and living in fear in China, I decided to risk going to South Korea. Even though adjusting to life in South Korea was not easy, I made a plan and started studying for the university entrance exam. Just as I was starting to get used to my new life, I received a shocking phone call -- the North Korean authorities intercepted some money that I sent my family through a broker, and as punishment, my family was going to be forcibly removed to a desolate location in the countryside.
They had to get out of North Korea quickly. So I started planning how to help them escape.

I took a flight back to China and headed toward the North Korean border. Since my family couldn't speak Chinese, I had to guide them, somehow, through more than 2,000 miles in China and then into Southeast Asia. The journey by bus took one week, and we were almost caught several times.

One time, our bus was stopped and boarded by a Chinese police officer. He took everyone's ID cards and started asking questions. Since my family couldn't understand Chinese, I thought we were going to be arrested. As the police officer approached my family, I quickly stood up and told him that these were deaf and dumb people that I was chaperoning. He looked at me suspiciously, but luckily, he believed me.
We made it all the way to the border of Laos, but I had to spend almost all of my money to bribe the border guards. Even after we got past the border, my family was arrested and jailed.

After I paid the bribe and fine, my family was released after one month. Soon after, they were arrested and jailed again in the capital of Laos. This was one of the lowest points in my life -- my mind and body felt completely drained, and I felt like a failure. I did everything to help my family get to freedom -- and we came so close. And now my family was thrown in jail just a short distance from the South Korean embassy.

I went back and forth between the police station and immigration office, desperately trying to get my family out ... but I didn't have enough money to pay the bribes. I lost all hope.

At that moment, I heard a man's voice asking me: "What's wrong?" I was so surprised that a total stranger cared enough to ask. He would only give me his first name. With my broken English and a dictionary, I explained the situation, and without hesitating, the man went to the ATM and paid the rest of the money for my family and two other North Koreans to get out of jail.

I thanked him with all my heart, and then I asked him, "Why are you helping me?" ... "I'm not helping you," he said. "I'm helping the North Korean people."
I realized that this was a symbolic moment in my life. The kind stranger symbolized new hope for me and other North Koreans when we needed it the most. He showed me that the kindness of strangers and the support of the international community are truly the rays of hope that the North Korean people need.

Eventually, after our long journey, my family and I were reunited in South Korea.

More info on human rights violations of North Korea:

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has officially acknowledged the widespread human rights violations that regularly occur in North Korea. The following section is a direct quote from the United Nation's Human Rights Resolution 2005/11 referring specifically to occurrences in North Korea:

Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, public executions, extra judicial and arbitrary detention, the absence of due process and the rule of law, imposition of the death penalty for political reasons, the existence of a large number of prison camps and the extensive use of forced labour;
Sanctions on citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea who have been repatriated from abroad, such as treating their departure as treason leading to punishments of internment, torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or the death penalty;

All-pervasive and severe restrictions on the freedoms of thought, conscience, religion, opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association and on access of everyone to information, and limitations imposed on every person who wishes to move freely within the country and travel abroad;

Continued violation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women, in particular the trafficking of women for prostitution or forced marriage, ethnically motivated forced abortions, including by labour inducing injection or natural delivery, as well as infanticide of children of repatriated mothers, including in police detention centres and labour training camps.

Pakistan

Malala Yousufzai arrives in the UK 

The 14 year old girl, Malala Yousufzai who was targeted by the Taliban and shot in the head and neck while on the school bus with her friends because she supported education for girls. Public outrage for the cowardly attack as has fueled Pakistan's rage towards the extremists, and the girl who sustained near fatal injuries is in a hospital in Birmingham where she could receive medical treatment to save her life, she would need extensive surgery to reconstruct her skull.Malala had been outspoken about education for young girls early on since her father ran a school for years in Mingora, and had been facing threats from the Taliban himself. In 2009, when Taliban militants forced the school to close, she blogged about it under a pseudonym, exposing what it was like to live under Taliban rule. 

 When the school reopened, Malala continued to speak out, appearing on talk shows and making public appearances demanding that girls in Pakistan have the right to an education. This heinous attack has united the Pakistan people against the Taliban, and man prominent political leaders have spoken against the group, even those that have had previous connections to the Taliban. Even Afghan President Hamid Karzai has sent his condolences, writing a public letter to Pakistani political leaders, asking them to do more to arrest terrorists who operate along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and bring these criminals to justice.

Afghan Women

Afghan girl was tortured in her home, found justice

The in-laws of a young Afghan girl named Sahar Gul, have been sentenced to 10 years in prison for torturing her in their basement because she refused to prostitute herself, and have sex with the man she was forced to marry at 13. The man, Ghulam Sakhi was 30, and she was well under the legal age of marriage 16, 15 with father's consent. 

Her father died and after being shifted about the homes of relatives she ended up living with her stepbrother Mohammad, his wife resented her presence and she was married of to a man more than twice her age. Ghulam Sakhi paid $5,000 for her, and illegal exchange. For weeks the girl managed to avoid consummating her marriage but was beaten by her husband for this reason, and was once sedated by her mother in law and raped by her husband. Sakhi was known to be violent and beat his previous wife because she could not bear children.

The girl began to lose weight and because of the beatings she couldn't do the housework expected of her, so her in-laws put her into the cellar where she was bound to a mattress and tortured by her husband's parents and her husband himself. She was brutalized, her chest was bitten, hot irons had been stuck in her ears and genitals and they had pulled off two of her fingernails. Neighbors eventually heard her voice from the cellar and called the police who found her in a pile of hay and animal dung. Ghulam Sakhi escaped with his brother and are at large, his parents and sister however, were arrested and charged with the torture and assault of Sahar. In July, the decision was upheld in an appeals court because it was being contested, this is huge progress for women in Middle Eastern countries because it shows that they can find justice from their attackers. Sahar is recuperating from her ordeal in Kabul. 

The Congo (Africa)

48 Women raped every hour in the Democratic Republic of Congo

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/12/48-women-raped-hour-congo

Tho Congo, deemed "the worst place on Earth to be a woman" has had a study of the incidents of rape, and the numbers are staggering. The report shows that 1,152 women are raped everyday. Even in non-conflict areas rape has become an all to common incident for women ages 15-49. And these reports come from the women who actually spoke up, studies have said that as many as 75% percent of women never come forward about their rapes. The United Nations calls the rape in the Congo "a weapon of war."

There have been reports of young women and elderly women being gang raped by armed militia. Women are often afraid to speak up for fear that they'll be abandoned by their husbands. 

UN has been investigating these reports but the problem still stands: "the important message remains: that rape and sexual slavery have become amazingly commonplace in this region of the DRC and have defined this conflict as a war against women". Other countries, among them the U.S, don't offer refugees from the Congo asylum because mass rape of women isn't defined as persecution. The sad truth is that these women who will have to deal with rape all their lives from an extremely young age, will most likely die in the Congo, never bettering themselves because they can't escape.

Rape victim in the Congo.

Thanks to donations and the resilience of the woman of the Congo however, a new center for women has been opened named City of Joy in Bukavu. It provides medical care for women that have been brutalized. The story of the creation of this center is one of tragedy, unspeakable cruelty, but ultimately hope.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/09/city-of-joy-congo-women-rape?intcmp=239

The women builders of City of Joy celebrating the opening of the center.

One of the women who advocated the building of the center was Jeanne, a native of the Congo. She as a young woman, was tied to a tree and and raped for weeks. She traveled and had paid for, and put her body through extensive surgery to repair the damage done by these militia men who brutalized her only to return home and be raped once again. During one of these attacks she had become pregnant. She was forced to give birth in front of the militia men, and the baby died. After she escaped to a hospital, she again went through extensive surgery to repair the damage. She may never have children again. She however, recounted her story in front of politicians of the Congo:

"When you look at me, what do you see? Do you see me as an animal? Because you are letting animals treat me like one. You, the government, if it was your children, would you stop it? You, you white people: if this violence was happening in your country, would you 

end it?" Hundreds of other survivors of sexual violence in the audience cheer wildly.

27 year old Jeanne

The gynecologists of the Center say that they have encountered injuries that were very hard to swallow. Young women, little girls, older women, who's reproductive organs have been destroyed by men, glass bottles, guns, and sticks. A civil rights activist Christine Schuler-Deschryver also helped involve women of the town to build the center. She recounts how she became an activist:

"When Dr Mukwege told me about these injuries, we were very afraid," she says. "And then, in 2000, I was in my office when a woman ran in with a baby girl, 18 months old, her legs both broken back – the baby had been raped. She died in my car on the way to Panzi hospital. I ran into the cathedral with the dead baby in my arms, shouting at God. And that 

was the day I became a radical fighter."

The Congo has been ravaged by civil war, and has a history of cruelty and death. King Leopold II of Belgium ran a genocidal regime to harvest its precious resources. Congo is rich in minerals such as Diamonds,rubber, gold, and avocados. But this has sadly led to exploitation by developed countries and after independence conflicts and civil war among the people themselves. Congo has 80% of Africa's mineral reserves and reserves of silicone which we use in American in our computers, cell phones, and other electronics in high demand. The rise in technology and violence in the Congo have grown exponentially, at the same rate. So think about how many women and men had been enslaved, and have been killed over the parts inside your precious cell phone. The conflict in the Congo has been instrumented by the people who participated in the Rwandan Genocide in the 1990's The FDLR a rebel militia group who implements child soldiers and young girls as sex slaves. Ultimately the UN has connected the fall of Congolese society and chaos to these mass rapes.  "If you destroy women, you destroy the Congo," Ensler says. "Raping women is the cheapest and most effective way to instil fear in and humiliate a community. It doesn't even cost a bullet."

Middle Eastern Women

Officials for the Olympic committee are reporting that Saudi Arabia finally allowed it's women athletes to compete in the London Olympics. This is a huge step forward for a country known for its oppressive nature when it comes to women. Among these women athletes in Sarah Attar, she runs track and field.

Sarah Attar at the 2012 London Olympics.

Pakistan

The story of 10 year old Zaib Aslam, is one that hear in America is shocking and heartbreaking, but in Pakistan is all to common place. This little girl was on the bus on her way to school when she, and her mother were attacked by her older sister's ex fiance and other men. They flung sulfuric acid they had bought for 88 cents at the store, at this little girl's face. her mother even swallowed some causing scars on her throat and face. Now her mother says, she doesn't want to go to school because she says she is ugly and can't stand seeing other girls her age look normal. She hides away in her room with a pink shawl over her scarred face. She is not like most 10 year old watching TV and having slumber parties with her friends because of this brutal, senseless act of violence.

Pictured above, Pakistani acid attack victim Fakhra Younus had endured more than three dozen surgeries over more than a decade to repair her severely damaged face and body when she finally decided to end her life in March of this year. She was attacked at 21 years old by her husband of 3 years when she left him due to physical and verbal abuse. He doused her in acid while her 5 year old son slept next to her. She committed suicide at 33 in Rome, Italy, her husband was never arrested, he is the son of a Pakistani politician, therefore he is almost untouchable.

The Pakistani government have done little to nothing in other acid attacks, but after the documentary by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy who won an Oscar this year for "Saving Face," her documentary on victims of acid attacks, the Pakistani government has met with criticism and been pressured to pass legislation rewarding acid attack victims. It passed in December, and the perpetrator of such a crime could spend 14 years to life in prison, and pay a fine of $11,000. The Pakistani Government doesn't keep track of acid attacks, but the Acid Survivors Foundation, a Pakistani advocacy group for victims, estimates that 150 occur each year. The majority of the victims are women, and attacks are often an escalation of domestic violence. Meaning a woman's own husband could douse her with acid, for any reason without penalty since a wife is a husband's "property".

Here is the trailer to the documentary "Saving Face":

                                        

American Women

American Women

http://www.womenarewatching.org/

What does Mitt Romney think of American Women's Health Services?

Here's what he has to say:

Romney's view on Planned Parenthood

This website is funded by Planned Parenthood and other organizations that offer birth control services, cancer screening, and overall womens' health services. These services are in jeopardy because of the upcoming elections for President, the Republican Candidate Mitt Romney, and his running mate Paul Ryan have vowed to cut funding from these services which could lead to higher teen pregnancies, more  cervical, breast, and ovarian cancer deaths, and as a result we will all have to deal with the strain of a population reliant on welfare to get by. Not to mention, the free and lost cost STD/STI and HIV/AIDS testing that these clinics provide. Who wants people running around with HIV/AIDS, Herpes, Syphillis and not even know it, or have the money to get proper treatment? 

Romney also refused to answer a question asked by Diane Sawyer, of whether he would pass the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which only aims at securing women;s paychecks, this is increasingly important with the increase of single women households and women being the breadwinners for their self and their children. There is a consistent gap of paychecks between women and men, and more so for ethnic minority women such as African American and Latino women. This act ensures a fair paycheck and aims at lessening this gap of income. However, Mitt Romney refuses to say what his view is on this Bill.

Again American woman are allowed to vote and therefore voice their opinions on who we are siding with in this year's presidential election. However, in many other countries women are still not allowed to voice their opinions like we Americans are. So this is a precious gift we are blessed with and should be appreciated.

My first blog :) let me know what you guys think!