N. Korea Tests Weapons on People, Gases Inmates-BBC

yahoo ^ | 1/31/04

[knak]

LONDON (Reuters) - A program made by Britain's BBC says North Korea (news - web sites) is killing political prisoners in experimental gas chambers and testing new chemical weapons on women and children.

Titled "Access to Evil" and being aired on Sunday, the program features an official North Korean document that says political prisoners are used to test new chemical weapons.

In a statement, the BBC said the documentary included comments by Kwon Hyuk, a new name given to a former military attache at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at Prison Camp 22.

Using a drawing, he describes a gas chamber and the victims he says he saw at the prison in the northeast of the secretive communist state, near the Russian border.

"I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing," he said.

"Normally, a family sticks together (in the gas chamber)... and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass."

Asked how he felt about the children, he said: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."

The documentary for the BBC's "This World" series was to be broadcast at 9 p.m. (2100 GMT).

EXPERIMENTS

North Korean officials in London were unavailable to comment. BBC journalist Olenka Frenkiel told Reuters she had three independent confirmations that Kwon Hyuk was genuine.

The human rights group Amnesty International said it had been unable to confirm previous reports of such testing.

"We have heard of these allegations but we cannot confirm them," a spokeswoman said.

North Korea -- described by President Bush (news - web sites) as part of an "axis of evil" because of a nuclear weapons program and authoritarian system -- has denied accusations of human rights abuses.

A top-secret North Korean document also says political prisoners are used for "human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons," the BBC said.

It interviews a person said to be a former prisoner in North Korea who had been ordered to poison others.

"An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners. One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women," Sun Ok Lee said, according to the BBC statement.

"All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were quite dead."

Frenkiel said she had also seen other official North Korean documents, one of which referred to the transfer of a prisoner "for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons" in February 2002.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[AntiKev]

Didn't GWB say "Iraq, Iran and North Korea"? Interesting...freakin Dems.

[chicagolady]

WOW! If I did not know better I would have thought Saddam Hussein was in North Korea!

[Guillermo]

North Korea is only doing this because Bush put them in the "Axis of Evil."

[michaelt]

If Blair had made these charges the BBC would have said he sexed them up.

[vpintheak]

These basturds need a seriously huge boot in the ass! This is dispicable if it is true.

[Terpfen]

Where's the documentaries on Saddam's methods of torture and genocide? The BBC is discriminating against Muslims!

[Indie]

Nuke 'em now. Period.

[stylin_geek]

Asked how he felt about the children, he said: "It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all."

This statement is very much like statements made by German soldiers at the Nuremberg Trials when being questioned about their involvement in the massacre of the Jews during WWII.

[The_Media_never_lie]

How wasteful!

NK is doomed to remain a backwater communist nation. Their cousins to the north, the Chicoms, would never gas political prisoners when they could harvest their organs and sell them to the highest bidder. This is an uneconomical practice.

[Arpege92]

"These basturds need a seriously huge boot in the ass!"

I'd say they deserve that and then some!

[U S Army EOD]

Well a lot of the German soldiers refused to take part in those things.

[U S Army EOD]

I have heard of simular incidents from other sources.

[Lion in Winter]

This really makes me sick. Dam- it.

Those poor people.

[pfflier]

The human rights group Amnesty International said it had been unable to confirm previous reports of such testing.

In a world controlled but tyrants they can't "verify"...but in a free society they are lightning quick to criticize.

[Nagilum]

The only shocking thing about this is that the BBC reported it.

[okie01]

I have one question:

Has this report by the BBC been "sexed-up"?

[NZerFromHK]

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

[breakem]

I'm sure the UN is all over this.