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Human rights activists from Europe, the U.S., South Korea and Japan on Thursday announced a ¡°Brussels Declaration¡± vowing to strengthen global solidarity on behalf of North Koreans and their rights. The declaration aiming to better the reclusive country¡¯s dismal human rights record was adopted at an international conference in the Belgian capital co-hosted by organizations including Freedom House of the U.S. and Human Rights Without Frontier that started Wednesday.
The declaration calls for increased cooperation with international organizations including filing regular reports so that now the UN Commission on Human Rights has been transformed into the UN Human Rights Council, it can directly address the North Korean human rights issue as a standing concern. They also resolved to raise awareness of North Korean refugees around the world. The first step will be arranging for defectors to testify before the Italian parliament in May.
Thursday also saw the first hearing in the European Parliament on North Korea human rights. Two refugees from the Stalinist country, Kim Tae-san (54) and Lee Sin (28), offered moving testimony of the plight of North Korean women exploited as labor or forced into prostitution.
¡°It was a historic event that members of the European Parliament in Brussels, the heart of the EU, were able to listen to such vivid testimony from North Korean refugees themselves,¡± said Istvan Szent-Ivany, the Hungarian MEP who led the hearing. ¡°It means that global society has started to speak in one voice and North Korean human rights are emerging as a universal concern.¡± He expressed confidence that the hearing will instill greater awareness of the problem among fellow MEPs.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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