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Thursday, November 17, 2005 

'Freedom From Religion'

Here's a heartwarming little story from N. Korea for all of you who think that we experience religious oppression from the Christians in this country,

Found on Drudge,
By MEGHAN CLYNE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
November 16, 2005

WASHINGTON - A woman in her 20s executed by a firing squad after being caught with a Bible. Five Christian church leaders punished by being run over by a steamroller before a crowd of spectators who "cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed."

These and other "horrifying" violations of human rights and religious freedom in North Korea are reported in a new study by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, titled "'Thank You, Father Kim Il Sung': Eyewitness Accounts of Severe Violations of Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion in North Korea."
I'm wondering what prompted the quotes around the word horrifying above. Is it only horrifying to certain people? It's certainly horrifying to me and it is the road we're leading down with this phony fear of religion that is emerging in this country. I wonder if Michael Newdow finds it horrifying?
"Satellite maps of North Korea show prison camps the size of whole cities," Mr. Bush said. "We will not forget the people of North Korea."
Is there any wonder how Korea and China are able to produce products so cheap? Christian Slave Labor... unless of course they decide to steamroll them. Seems about as fair as throwing Christians in with the Lions eh?
Among the first-hand reports are eyewitness accounts of Christians' being executed for the underground practice of their faith.

The study recounts, for example, how in November 1996 in North Korea's South Pyongan province, a unit of the North Korean army was tasked with widening a highway connecting Pyongyang to a nearby port city. While demolishing a vacant house, soldiers found in the basement, hidden between two bricks, a Bible and a list of 25 names. Among the list were individuals identified as a Christian pastor, two assistant pastors, two elders, and 20 parishioners who were identified by their occupations.

Hunted down at their workplaces by military police, the 25 Christians were rounded up and detained without any formal judicial procedure. Later that month, the parishioners and their clergy were brought to the road construction site, where spectators had been arranged in neat rows to observe the public execution of the pastor, assistant pastors, and elders. According to a report based on an eyewitness account, the five church leaders "were bound hand and foot and made to lie down in front of a steamroller," accused of subversion and of being Kiddokyo, or Protestant Christian, spies.

The 20 parishioners were detained near their clergy, and watched, along with the assembled audience, as the five Christian leaders were told they could escape death if they denied their faith and pledged to serve only Kim Jong Il and his father, the first dictator of communist Korea, Kim Il Sung. According to the eyewitness, the clergy remained silent.

For their steadfast belief, the Christians were executed. According to the report, "Some of the fellow parishioners assembled to watch the execution cried, screamed out, or fainted when the skulls made a popping sound as they were crushed beneath the steamroller."
Unreal... oh, but wait there's more charming news from the Dictatorial Utopia of N. Korea...
Another account contained in the report says that on a summer day in North Korea in 1997, a young woman was washing clothes in a tributary of the Tumen River when she dropped a small Bible she had hidden amid the laundry. Spotted by a fellow washerwoman, the girl was reported to North Korean authorities on the suspicion that she was engaging in an exercise of thought or religion condemned by the state. The girl, believed to be in her 20s, and her father, estimated to be around 60, were arrested by local national security police and imprisoned for three months.

One morning, they were taken to a public market area, where, after a brief show trial, the father and daughter were condemned as traitors to the North Korean nation and its communist dictator, Kim Jong Il. The father and daughter were then tied to stakes a few meters from where they had been "tried," and, before an assembly of schoolchildren, were riddled with bullets by seven policemen who fired three shots each into the pair. According to a report drawn from eyewitness accounts, "The force of the rifle shots, fired from fifteen meters away, caused blood and brain matter to be blown out of their heads."
Note to Dick(head) Durbin: This is what a real Gulag and real torture consists of. The killing and torturing of innocent people, not the killing and torturing of those who seek to separate your pea brain from your shoulders... jackass.

linked with: Insolublog, Don Surber, Stuck on Stupid, The Tar Pit, Common Folk Using Common Sense, Third World County, Adam's Blog, NIF, Basil's Breakfast, and Mudville Gazette.

Exactly. It's horrifying and will take mass concern and awareness to do something about the persecution of Jews and Christians (the two most persecuted religions around the world according to statistics). Trying to bring awareness to these facts inspires even more hostility from some in this country, in my experience anyhow.

From time to time it's good to be reminded of how spoiled and selfish a lot of us are in the United States. AND where we don't want our lives to be headed.

What an excellent use of christians. Who said the North Koreans never had a good idea?

Uber: Unfortunately this is going to be the modus operendi (that was semi related to pig latin) of the powers that be until You-Know-Who decides to make a 2000 year old encore.

chrys: Those who don't know their history is condemned to repeat it.

Diane: they don't care, all they care about is the emotion that results from fighting shadows.

Red: It could be a big hit on Pay per view over there soon... they are a semi-capitalist society when it suits the perpetuation of the current regime...

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