A toddler was sentenced to life imprisonment in North Korea after the child’s family was found in possession of a Bible, according to a new report by the US State Department.
Although the incident took place in 2009, it has been highlighted in the department’s new report on international religious freedoms this month, citing data from Korea Future, a non-governmental organisation documenting human rights abuses in North Korea.
“One case involved the 2009 arrest of a family based on their religious practices and possession of a Bible.
“The entire family, including a two-year-old child, were given life sentences in political prison camps,” it said.
There are estimated to be between 200,000 and 400,000 clandestine Christians in the North Korea, mainly in the West where many are believed to have settled after an “explosion” of interest in the religion in 1907.
Korea Future’s report was based on interviews between 2007 and 2020 with 244 victims of religious persecution, who had been subjected to arrest, detention, forced labour, torture, denial of fair trial or right to life, and to sexual violence, for practicing shamanism, or Christian beliefs.
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North Korea has confirmed that it will launch its first spy satellite in June, with a senior official citing a need to monitor the U.S. and its allies "in real time" as they hold a series of ongoing joint military exercises, state-run media said Tuesday.
Japan on Monday ordered the Self-Defense Forces to prepare to shoot down a North Korean ballistic missile or rocket that threatens Japanese territory, the Defense Ministry said, after Pyongyang notified Tokyo of plans to launch the satellite before June 11.
The satellite as well as “various reconnaissance means due to be newly tested are indispensable to tracking, monitoring, discriminating, controlling and coping with … the dangerous military acts of the U.S. and its vassal forces,” Ri Pyong Chol, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party, said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The U.S. and South Korea have conducted numerous joint military drills in recent months, including large-scale live-fire exercises — called “combined annihilation firepower drills” — that will run through June.
The plan to put a satellite into orbit — the North’s first space rocket launch in more than seven years — has been met with condemnation.
"Satellite launches incorporate technology that is nearly identical to and compatible with that used in ballistic missiles, and we believe that, regardless of the terminology used by North Korea, the one planned for this time will also use ballistic missile technology," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a news conference Tuesday, adding that the use of such technology violated United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.
Matsuno said Japan was working closely with the U.S. and South Korea to monitor the situation while urging North Korea to refrain from provocative acts.
Japan is not taking any chances, ordering the SDF to be ready to destroy any rocket or debris that might threaten its territory after the government said the rocket could fly over Okinawa Prefecture.
"If there is a recognized threat that a North Korean missile will fall into Japanese territory, all necessary measures, including interception, will be taken," Matsuno said.
Indeed:
Parliament must change federal law to permit police, postal inspectors or First Nations constables to open letters in transit, says one of the nation’s largest Indigenous groups. Letter mail is a leading source of narcotics, says the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs: “Postal shipments have become the most common method of distribution for illegal substances.”
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Cabinet will attempt to reintroduce an internet censorship bill by year’s end. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez yesterday told the Commons heritage committee he would “have more to announce shortly,” adding: “We have worked a good deal on this issue.”
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