a new human rights body after the current one expelled a former Chinese Christian prisoner because China objected to his presentation. Altough he did not mention the incident by name, Annan stressed that "nobody has a monopoly on human rights virtue."
Speaking at the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) in Geneva, Annan said the world body is failing to protect against human rights abuses, particularly in Sudan’s conflict-ravaged Darfur region, and should be replaced by a council with greater authority.
Christian human rights activists, including the expelled reverend Bob Fu had tried to focus the UN’s attention on the plight of persecuted and apparently tortured Christians in China and other Communist nations. Fu, who was in prison for his activities as a church leader, was expelled from the Geneva after the Chinese delegation objected to him showing a torture weapon smuggled out of China, China Aid Association said Wednesday, April 6.
PARALLEL MEETING
On Thursday, April 7, Jubilee Campaign another human rights watchdog, said however it had managed to co-organize a special parallel meeting focusing on what it called "ongoing atrocities committed against house church members in China." Liu Xianzhi, a senior leader of the South China Church, testified that Chinese authorities reportedly detained her in 2001 because of evangelism.
"She was administratively sentenced to three years of re- education through labor and only released in February 2004. However, the circumstances were even more sinister in that she was severely tortured and suffered sexual assault by prison guards in order to force her to implicate Pastor Gong Shengliang in false rape charges," the organization said in a statement to BosNewsLife News Center. "Pastor Gong was later sentenced to life in prison on October 10, 2002."
Jubilee Campaign said it also show "the gross violations of human rights" in China’s neighbor North Korea, a Communist nation where Christians and political prisoners are believed to be held in appalling conditions. The organization presented an updated petition to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances for Reverend Dong Shik Kim, a Christian humanitarian worker and pastor in China who was abducted by North Korean agents in 2000 for helping 13 North Korean refugees to escape a year earlier.
SUFFERING PASTOR
Despite international efforts the whereabouts are unknown of the 57-year old Presbyterian minister, who suffers from colon cancer and "can not walk with a cane", Jubilee Campaign said. On January 9, 2005, one of the kidnappers, identified as Ryu Young Hwa, was reportedly arrested in South Korea by South Korean authorities and has since apparently admitted to the kidnapping of Rev. Kim.
There are believed to be 400,000 Christians in the 25-million strong nation, with many of them meeting illegally in small groups, known as house churches. At least dozens of Christians are known to have disappeared, added Open Doors, which supports persecuted Christians.
Human rights watchdogs believe that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il runs a brutal and bizarre state, where Christians are among those groups persecuted for "ideological crimes" with many living in labor camps and Communist style prisons or facing execution.
PUBLIC EXECUTIONS
At the UN meeting in Geneva "the first ever video footage of public executions of defectors was shown. This video, just broadcast on Japanese television, provides irrefutable evidence of an outdoor public trial, pronouncement of a guilty verdict and sentence to death by a "judge," and the victim’s execution by firing squad," Jubilee Campaign said "Children can be seen in the public audience, as can police who prodded the crowd into viewing position."
It also expressed concern about reports of severe food shortages in North Korea which the organization called "a direct consequence of structural problems in the manner in which food is internally produced" or "imported from the outside" and distributed. Jubilee Campaign urged the UN to pressure and help North Korea "to increase the distribution of food aid to children and women."
The organization also expressed concern about other countries including Eritrea. It said "well over 500 Evangelical Christians have been arrested, hundreds of minority church members remain detained including in container cars, political dissidents have been silenced by imprisonment, journalists arrested, and the media controlled. Eritrea is the site of grave human rights abuses."
IRAQ MENTIONED
It also urged the UN to step up efforts to assist "the remaining followers of John the Baptist", who the Bible says preached the coming of the Messiah and Baptized Jesus, the Son of God. They "have faced growing persecution and threatened annihilation by Islamic extremists in Iraq," Jubilee Campaign said.
However despite the efforts by human rights watchdogs, there is frustration within the UN that its UNCHR, with 53 Member States, is unable, or unwilling, to push for change. "The cause of human rights has entered a new era," Annan said in a keynote speech Thursday, April 7. "The era of declaration is now giving way, as it should, to an era of implementation."
(With BosNewsLife News Center, Reports from Geneva, North Korea, China and BosNewsLife Research).
