The case of Roxana Saberi, the American/Iranian journalist jailed on a spurious charge of espionage in Tehran, has belatedly received quite a lot of media attention here and in the USA (my previous blog posts on the case are here).
So what about Laura Ling and Euna Lee, American reporters arrested by North Korean guards on the Chinese border on 17 March?
Today the North Korean news agency said that they would be tried “on the basis of the confirmed crimes committed by them.” That doesn’t sound good. Tried for what? Why? And who’s trying to help them? They’ve already been held in a North Korean “guesthouse” for five weeks.
The two women were reporting for a small internet TV channel based in San Francisco called Current TV when they either crossed or strayed too near the Tumen River which divides China from North Korea.
In winter, the river is frozen so it’s easy to cross, but it’s not clear whether they slipped over onto the North Korean side, or whether the soldiers went into China and seized them. They were reporting on refugees who escape to China – an important story Channel 4 News has covered several times in the past.
Maybe Current TV has been told that kicking up too much of a fuss wouldn’t help the cause. But it does seem a little strange that, at time of writing, the Current.com website made no mention we could find of the journalists’ plight. Current TV is backed by Al Gore but I haven’t yet heard him publicly calling for the women’s release.
I know that the North Korean regime doesn’t respond well to western pressure. The Americans, who don’t have direct relations with Pyongyang, have apparently made representations through the Swedes. But it’s easy for governments to give up if there’s no publicity. In the past, North Korea has responded to carefully prepared visits by individual envoys.
More than that, their families might like to feel that some people care, and are aware of the ordeal Laura Ling and Euna Lee are going through.
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Good post, thanks for doing it. The New York Times has an article on the Web today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world/asia/25korea.html
Lindsey: Thanks for keeping the Worlds’ Eyes on this important story….
If this is all correct, I’m surprised international human rights agencies have not also raised the plight of the two journalists, why is Al Gore silent, why have the Swedes been approached, why has the U.S. said nothing? Surely, President Obama would be concerned – individual human life should foremost be protected and are more important than the concerns of everyday world politics. I’m not naive; the world is such that individual rights, even in the western world are slowly being eroded. Please continue your coverage of these two journalists.
Possibly the US are not aware of their situation; US journalists are seized regularly so maybe its just another everyday story. I do know the Swedes offer a neutral-country link between N Korea and the West as direct communications are very difficult to or from the Dear Leader [Kim Jong-il] and his officials. Incidentally, if the journalists are captives not prisoners awaiting trial, they could try to access a mobile web or wap site http://tagtag.com/release if they have compatible equipment, and attempt to send a message out [with permission].
Perhaps Channel 4 News should try interviewing Mitch Koss, the Current TV cameraman who eluded capture at the Tumen River. He’s back in the US after an unusually brief detainment in China.
Meanwhile Asia Times reporter Donald Kirk speculates that the American journalists were tricked by their ethnic Korean Chinese guide and set up for capture by North Korea.
I tend to believe this possibility based on my own successful infiltrations of the North Korea border further south near Dandong several years ago. North Korean border sentries likely would not have apprehended the Americans if not previously tipped off by somebody on the China side of the border..
That is a very interesting aspect of the story that Channel 4 should do an investigative report on Current TV Cameraman….
Why don’t you ask Mitch Koss? I’m sure the Current TV cameraman cares about the 2 journalists he left behind at the Tumen River!
Let’s see Channel 4 News get an exclusive interview with Mitch so that the world will know what really happened!
There are credible claims on the grapevine that the man named Bayan Jaber Soulagh (Zubaidi) is about to embark on a visit to the UK. Mr Soulagh, is the current Iraqi Finance Minister who had served as Iraq’s interior minister May 2005 till April 2006 (in Ibrahim Jaafari’s government).
This man is linked to many acts of mass arbitrary arrests and murder. He had conceded that death squads operated from the interior ministry in an interview with Martin Smith during the filiming of his documentary ‘Gangs of Iraq’.
Deborah Davies of Channel 4, the main investigative journalist of the documentary The Death Squads interviewed Wijdan Salim Michael, the minister for Human Rights in Iraq. Ms Wijdan had found an Iraqi woman prisoner being held on the sixth floor of the interior ministry’s main building in the centre of Baghdad. This woman was held there for three weeks and had been repeatedly raped. Ms Michael, said that she did not believe the then interior minister, Mr Soulagh when he said he did not know anything about this woman.
Please question him closely on his R record. And now he is th Finance Minister, Iraq is the third most corrupt country in the world according to Transperancy International. Will someone please put him in front of a court of law?
[...] the new year in North Korea, as there was for the Iran. Also, as several readers of The Lede and Lindsey Hilsum of Britain’s Channel 4 News have noted, the case of Roxana Saberi, the jailed Iranian-American journalist has gotten a lot more [...]
[...] international editor, Lindsey Hilsum, blogged on the case in April, when the North Korean government announced the reporters would be tried. She noted the apparent [...]
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