Students write N. Korea petition

During election years, there is always the potential for partisan gridlock to stall any meaningful action.\nIn the name of advancing the cause of human rights, some IU students are looking to work against that standstill.\nA bipartisan coalition of students, including the president of the IU College Democrats and the chairman of the IU College Republicans, sent a petition to Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., requesting his help in addressing human rights violations in North Korea.\n"We ... are unified in our concern about the human rights situation in North Korea," the petition read. "We regret that both policymakers and the media tend to focus on Kim Jong Il's nuclear proliferation to the exclusion of his human rights violations."\nThe petition urged Lugar, the senior senator from Indiana and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to use his clout to help pass the Senate version of the North Korean Freedom Act, a bill that would direct all negotiations involving North Korea to include discussions on human rights and to authorize delivery of humanitarian assistance to refugees.\n"As North Korea tries to play its card of nuclear proliferation at the negotiating table, the U.S. should always counter with its trump card of human rights," said graduate student Daniel Levin, founder of IU Students for North Korean Human Rights.\nA similar bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, passed the House of Representatives unanimously earlier this year. The Senate bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan.\n"The U.S. government, together with as many allies as it can muster, needs to shine as bright a light as possible on North Korea's human rights abuses," Levin said. "The last thing totalitarian states want is close scrutiny of their police states."\nThe petition sent to Lugar said at least 200,000 North Koreans are imprisoned in the government's concentration camps and have been subjected to torture, slave labor, public execution, starvation and forced abortions. \nLast April the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea brought two defectors -- one a former concentration camp inmate and the other a former guard -- to speak at the Indiana Memorial Union.\nLevin said he appreciates the bipartisan cooperation.\nBoth IUCD's president, sophomore Mandy Carmichael and IUCR's chairman, senior Angel Rivera, echoed sentiments that their bipartisan cooperation sends a positive message that the issue is not about politics but about working toward a common goal of protecting human rights.\n"Human rights is not and should never become a partisan issue," Carmichael said. "As Americans, we should all recognize the importance of protecting human rights across the globe."\nRivera said while he disagrees with the IUCDs on many issues, progressing human rights abroad is certainly not one of them.\n"The fact that we are working together on this and other projects just shows our commitment to make our country, our state and our campus a little better," Rivera said. \nIn a written reply from Lugar's office, Lugar said he is inclined to support the North Korean Human Rights Act in its current form. \nLugar's letter said he had written letters to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan encouraging the United Nations to petition the allowance of the World Food Program in North Korean prison camps.\nSince becoming the Foreign Relations Committee's chairman in January 2003, Lugar said 12 hearings have been held at various levels relating to North Korea and that human rights were a major topic at those hearings.\nIn a July 2003 Washington Post editorial, Lugar argued the U.S. should lead on the North Korea issue and, citing the exodus of East Germans from Communist rule in the 1980s, said the U.S. should offer refugees resettlement options in America and other countries "because it's the right thing to do."\nLevin is ultimately encouraged to see students active in helping North Koreans.\n"Pundits and academics like to lament the supposed political apathy of today's college students. Somehow, maybe because our generation hasn't rioted at Kent State or sat-in at Columbia, we must not care," Levin said. "IU students are proving today that not only do we care about the North Korean people, we're using our political system to help them overcome theirs."\n-- Contact senior writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.