Havel on North Korea

Vaclav Havel issues an appeal to the world's democracies over North Korea:

[P]eople who use eyewitness testimony in attempts to expose the greatest crimes against humanity can be found in each era and all over the world.

Rithy Panh described the terror of the Khmer Rouge, Kanan Makiya detailed the brutal prisons of Saddam Hussein and Harry Wu has tried to show the perversion of the Laogai system of Chinese forced labour camps.

Today, the testimony of thousands of North Korean refugees, who survived the miserable journey through China to South Korea, tell of the criminal nature of the North Korean dictatorship. Accounts of repression are supported and verified by modern satellite images, and clearly illustrate that North Korea has a functioning system of concentration camps.

The Kwan-li-so, or the "political penal labour colony", holds as many as 200,000 prisoners who are barely surviving day-to-day or are dying in the same conditions as the millions of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system did in the past.
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The victims of the North Korean regime number in the millions.
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Kim Jong-il wants to be respected and feared abroad, and he wants to be recognised as one of the most powerful leaders in today's world. He is willing to let his people die of hunger, and uses famine to liquidate any sign of wavering loyalty to his rule.
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Now is the time for the democratic countries of the world - the European Union, the United States, Japan and last but not least South Korea - to unify under a common position.

These countries must make it clear that they will not make concessions to a totalitarian dictator. They must state that respect for basic human rights is an integral part of any future discussions with Pyongyang. Decisiveness, perseverance and negotiations from a position of strength are the only things that Kim Jong-il and those similar to him understand.

(Hat tip: Sophie Masson.)