NGO launches campaign on N.K. rights in Geneva

People for Successful Corean Reunification, a non-profit group, said it launched a campaign against North Korea’s rights abuses in Geneva on Monday to coincide with a United Nations Human Rights Council session.

North Korean human rights is not on the agenda for the U.N. session that runs through Sept. 28, but past meetings have taken up a resolution condemning the repressive regime’s public executions, prison camps and torture.

Based in Seoul and Washington, PSCORE was founded in 2006 by a group of defectors and activists. In August, it acquired consultative status from the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

A North Korean defector and 13 other members from five countries ― South Korea, the U.S., Canada, Switzerland and Israel ― are carrying out the week-long event, PSCORE secretary-general Nam Ba-da said in a statement.

Themed “The North Korean: the Voiceless, the Blinded, the Truthless,” the campaign includes public debates, a flash mob portraying public executions in the communist state and screening of a film titled “48m” at the council’s meeting hall.

More than 300 refugees shared their experience and hundreds of young people from other countries took part in the production of the movie, according to PSCORE. The title describes the shortest distance across Yalu River, which marks the border between the North and China.

“The title conveys how the North Korean government impels its citizens to live without freedom of expression and without seeing or hearing the truth,” Nam said.

(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)