Korean Peninsula

Lord Bishop of Hereford Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for initiating this short debate. I have been able to attend some of the meetings organised by the all-party group, and particularly welcomed the chance in 2011 to meet the Speaker of the North Korean Assembly, Choe Tae Bok, when he visited the United Kingdom as the guest of that all-party group. Among the questions we touched upon during that discussion were the humanitarian situation and the issue of religious freedom, and today I should like to say something about both.

Forty years ago, North Korea’s gross domestic product was twice that of South Korea. Today, North Korea is among the world’s poorest nations while the south is among the richest. Today, the gross domestic product of South Korea is nearly 30 times that of the north—a 60-fold difference. The situation has been aggravated by famine, a series of natural disasters and the near total collapse of the Soviet economies, once the DPRK’s primary market, all of which have, of course, contributed to the country’s abject poverty.

UNICEF DPRK recently published its national nutritional survey. There was one slight encouragement: that malnutrition had dropped by four percentage points since 2009. However, I go on quickly to say that, nevertheless, malnutrition is over 27%. UNICEF’s representative in North Korea, Desiree Jongsma, reminded us of what that statistic means. She said that,

“more than one in every four children remains stunted, hostage to life-long ill-health and reduced educational and career prospects as a result of a lack of much needed proteins, fruits, vegetables and fats, as well as frequent infections due to a lack of both essential medicines and clean water, as well as poor hygiene”.

On average, boys in North Korea are five inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts and weigh 25 pounds less. Malnutrition, of course, leads not only to physical weakness but to intellectual impairment. It leads to a frail population and makes the people especially vulnerable to disease.

When the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, visited North Korea, I understand that they were told by senior DPRK officials that the average citizen receives only a meagre 350 to 400 grams of rice each day, well short of even the regime’s sparse target of 600 grams. However, I understand that the reality in practice is that many see no rice at all, subsisting instead on husky cornmeal. Two million people are estimated to have died during the famine of the 1990s.

In those circumstances, we need to think very carefully about the morality of food being used as a weapon of war or coercion. Surely it can never be right to withhold food from starving people as a way of punishing their leaders. It was a tragedy that the £126 million food programme which the United States had generously decided to put in place last year was literally blown off the agenda by North Korea’s decision to launch a satellite nine months ago. However, the North Korean leadership should also reflect on the morality of spending vast sums on developing a nuclear capability and on maintaining the world’s fourth largest standing army when they cannot feed their own people. That is surely a scandalous and immoral misuse of resources.

The former Leader of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said that the situation has been “getting worse year on year”. She continued,

“the most vulnerable people in North Korea are victims of a situation over which they have no control. They are suffering from no fault of their own”.

South Korea’s decision to withhold food aid, supported by the Obama Administration, has inevitably put innocent lives at risk while doing nothing to bring about the end of the conflict between north and south. You cannot starve people into submission and you should never try.

In May 2012, two organisations, Sant’Egidio and Caritas Korea, delivered 25 tonnes of food aid to the DPRK. That was done at the request of Han Tae-song, North Korea’s former ambassador to Rome. That is but a small contribution; nevertheless, it is an act on which we must build. It is not coincidental that those organisations which have been taking in food and medicine have often been inspired to do so by their Christian faith. I think, for instance, of the remarkable American priest, Father Jerry Hammond, who has made more than 40 visits to North Korea, taking in medicines to combat tuberculosis.

Paradoxically, despite that outpouring of practical love, since the 18th century Korea has been the scene of much persecution of Christians. In 1846, Korea’s first ordained Catholic priest, Andrew Kim, was at the age of 25 taken to the Han sands, where he was stripped naked and decapitated; there have been more than 8,000 Catholic martyrs. In 1866, Robert Jermain Thomas, a Welsh missionary, travelled on behalf of the Bible Society to Pyongyang and to the Taedong river, where he was executed. The latest Open Doors World Watch List, published less than two weeks ago, ranks North Korea as the country where Christians are persecuted the most, as has been the case every year since the list was first published in 2002.

Christians are motivated by love, believing that each person is made in the image of God and, because of that, worthy of the utmost respect and elevation of their human dignity. Religious freedom would bring untold blessings to North Korea, not least through the provision of sustained and significant programmes providing for food, education, welfare and health.

Kang Pan Sok, the great-grandmother of Kim Jong-un, was the elder of a Christian church in Pyongyang, so the leadership of that country know from their own story that they have nothing to fear from the Christian faith. It would be a sign of great hope if perhaps, in her memory, her great-grandson could now see the way to opening the path for the church to play its part in building and helping to contribute to a prosperous and peaceful North Korea. Now there is something to hope and pray for.

Bahrain

Lord Bishop of Hereford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is right that whenever you close down the space for legitimate protest, you start increasing the space where extremism can thrive. Those are the points that we make. But noble Lords may take some comfort from the fact that in the Universal Periodic Review to which Bahrain submitted itself last year, of the 176 international recommendations that came back, 143 were adopted in full and 13 partially. Therefore, progress was made by international concerted action.

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, will the Minister give assurances that the strength of the Government’s ongoing protest at these decisions of Bahrain’s highest court will not be compromised or weakened by any other considerations? I am sure that she would agree that it is vital that we are consistent in our speaking up for those suffering injustice, and that we uphold individual freedoms of speech and expression of that, as well as, as has been referred to already, their protection from abuse in detention or anywhere else.

[Baroness Warsi]

I can give the right reverend Prelate that assurance.

North Korea

Lord Bishop of Hereford Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

I agree with the noble Lord. I think that the timing of this testing is indeed important and relevant, so soon after the US elections and the transfer of power in China and just before the elections in Japan and South Korea. We are looking at the timing of this matter in some detail. I also agree with the noble Lord that for a country with extreme poverty to be using resources on developing what we feel to be further nuclear missile technology is not an appropriate use of funds.

I can confirm that the North Korean ambassador to the UK was called to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today—indeed, possibly as we speak, he is in a meeting with the Permanent Under-Secretary.

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that in a country where there is so much human suffering, it would behove North Korea rather more to make a priority of alleviating suffering, as well as seeking dialogue and reconciliation, and that this provocative act, as she described it, damages both those targets? Will she ensure that we do not lose sight of the human rights violations in a country where the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people are held in prison camps?

[Baroness Warsi]

The right reverend Prelate is right. In a country where both resource and energy could be spent on so much, whether on alleviating poverty or on human rights, this does not appear to be an act which is in the interests of its own people.

Libya

Lord Bishop of Hereford Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Those are indeed the objectives, as my noble friend acknowledges, and we will pursue them. How will we do it? We want to see the UN take the co-ordination role. A lot of co-ordination is needed, with wide international efforts for stabilisation, reconstruction and general social improvement, and recovery from the horrors of the last few months. Alongside that, we will work with all the agencies and through our own contribution to achieve these aims. I do not think that I can be more specific at this stage. In addition, as my noble friend knows, the Department for International Development is providing considerable funds to help with the reconstruction.

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, I understand that Article 6 of the draft constitution emphasises the equality of citizenship before the law, but I am also aware that the constitution refers to Islam as the principal source of its jurisprudence. The two positions are not incompatible, but it would be helpful to learn about the conversations that our Government have had with the Transitional National Council in Libya regarding the protection of minorities.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The right reverend Prelate is absolutely right. These are very important issues, which we are raising all the time in our discussions and in the support that we are seeking to give. We do not want to cross the borderline between support and reinforcement of the new Libya, if that is what is going to emerge—the business is yet unfinished, as noble Lords know. We do not want to cross the line into telling the Libyan people what to do, as they own the procedure. However, they do respect these values, and we will certainly make those points to them in our continuing dialogue.