- (AFP) -- China has arrested the man who leaked top secret
government documents from a North Korean prison camp detailing routine
testing of chemical weapons on political prisoners, a report said.
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- The man, who was not named, was seized by Chinese authorities
after escaping across the border with his family, Radio Free Asia said,
citing a South Korean human rights activist who recently appeared in a
BBC documentary on the subject.
-
- "I made contact with this person in a chemical factory
in North Korea a long time ago," said the activist, Kim Sang-hun,
who smuggled the documents out of the Stalinist nation.
-
- "He has been waiting, and waiting to obtain this
document. Then he got the chance, and it was smuggled out of North Korea.
His words were not enough. He wanted to show the evidence to the world,
but he was captured in China."
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- According to the BBC documentary aired last week, entire
families, including children, were regularly tortured and executed, while
others had poisonous gases and other weapons used on them.
-
- The broadcast cited Kwon Hyok, who defected to South
Korea in 1999 while stationed as a North Korean intelligence officer in
Beijing, as saying he witnessed chemical experiments being carried out
on political prisoners in gas chambers.
-
- Kim, 71, said the document he smuggled, and used in the
documentary, was a transfer list ordering certain prisoners to be taken
to the chemical facilities near the Russian border, known as Camp 22.
-
- "This is genuine. This is not a government-to-government
document. This is a secret document, published for the eyes of a select
few," Kim said, adding that it would be extremely hard to counterfeit
an official North Korean government seal as they were manufactured under
police supervision.
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- He said the plan had been for the captured man to testify
to the world in person about the truth of the reports and the authenticity
of the document.
-
- "Our plan was to be ready when North Korea denied
it, then we would provide the document and further evidence ... but the
plan failed because they were captured," Kim said.
-
- "It is urgent. We must save them."
-
- Authorities in Pyongyang have called the allegations
a "sheer lie", claiming they were part of a smear campaign led
by the United States.
-
- Such stories are notoriously difficult to verify given
that the vast bulk of North Korea, ruled for the past half-century by father-and-son
dictators Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il, is completely sealed off to foreigners.
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- China, North Korea's closest ally and aid provider, had
no immediate response to the report Wednesday.
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- Kim, who traveled to London last week as part of an effort
to pressure China to release the man and his relatives, said they were
in imminent danger of being deported back to North Korea.
-
- "These people will be dragged to North Korea, (where)
they will face death. This person will be executed, or punished,"
he said.
-
- Last year a report compiled by a former UN human rights
investigator estimated that up to 200,000 people are detained at brutal
"slave" camps.
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