At UN, North Korea Charges Sex Slavery By Japan,
Sarah Palin's Pass
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
September 27 -- Amid
counter-charges of sexual slavery and abductions between Japan and
North Korea,
the week of UN General Debate came to an ugly end late on Saturday
evening. The
North Korean representative read out a speech urging "high vigilance"
against human rights, denounced the United States, South Korea and
Japan. A
person seated with the South Korean delegation, seemingly an intern,
incongruously clapped at the end of the North Korean diatribe. But
neither the
U.S. nor South Korea chose to exercise its right of reply.
This was
left to
Japan, whose representative pitched in English for a permanent role for
his
country on the UN Security Council. "Since the end of World War
Second," he said, Japan has served on the Council as a non-permanent
member a total of nine times, or for 18 years. Meanwhile, he said,
North Korea
had yet to resolve the issue of Japanese citizens abducted and
disappeared into
North Korea. Abductee Ingrid Betancourt, recently freed from Colombia,
spoke
about this North Korean issue earlier in the month. North Korea
sur-replied,
saying that it had turned over some few remaining abductees, but Japan
has
failed to "repent of of heinous crimes."
This
time, a number was
attached to the crimes: 7,784,839 Koreas were conscripted to serve the
Japanese
invaders, he said, along with 200,000 women and girls as "comfort
women"
or sexual slaves. Worst, the North Korean said, Japanese officials in
2007 had
claimed there was "no evidence" of forced sexual services, and that
the woman at issue were "only prostitutes sold by their parents."
This was said with a bitterness not matched in the General Debate. When
the
Japanese represented, trying to sur-sur-reply, fell to a pause in his
comments,
new President of the General Assembly Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann said "doy
la palabra," I give the floor, back to North Korea. Soon
thereafter, he
gaveled the session to a close.
![](unga1dprk.jpg)
Pak Gil Yon, once (and current?) rep of the
DPRK, speaks of sexual slavery
Hugo
Chavez and the United States don't begin
to compare to this rivalry. Perhaps, now, Georgia and Russia. During
their
conflict in August, Russia called Georgian president Saakashvili crazy,
while
he said that Russia hates all freedom and event destroys "swimming
pools
and music halls" that Georgia has build, to bring in "famous rock and
roll musicians." Could this mean Bono, who also showed up at the UN
this
week?
In other
wacky news of the UN week, while vice presidential candidate Sarah
Palin was
never seen inside the UN building, she did make it onto locked-down
First
Avenue, to be filmed for television. Since to get east of Second Avenue
a UN grounds
pass was needed, the question arose: was Palin given a U.S. mission
pass? Or
was she temporarily deemed a journalist by those who interviewed her? There were dark rumors of two Iranian
journalists being hindered, one by the U.S. Secret Service, at the
instructions
of the Iranian mission.
Elsewhere,
journalists pleaded with security to be let
walk the hallway toward the General Assembly, in one case to make an
appointment with Rwandan president Paul Kagame. No, the reporter was
told. Can
you go and tell him that I will not be able to be there? No, again, the
reporter was told to contact the Rwandan mission himself.
As
noted,
there was the sad afternoon when Burkina Faso's foreign minister Yoda
spoke
into the black hole of a dead UN TV camera, his words going nowhere,
not unlike
in the General Debate. Click here
for that story.
Watch this site, and this Sept. 18 (UN) debate.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
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