THE NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — The United States government and Western rights groups protested Monday after North Korea’s highest court sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor, a move that introduced another complicating factor into Washington’s stand-off with North Korea over its nuclear and missile tests and its broader nuclear ambitions.
The two journalists — Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36 — were detained by North Korean soldiers at the Chinese border on March 17 and charged with illegally entering North Korean territory and “hostile acts,” but not with the more serious charge of espionage as some had feared. The North’s official news agency, KCNA, announced the conviction and sentence in a report monitored in Seoul.
Lisa Ling, Laura Ling’s sister, told ABC television that the two journalists were working on a story about the trafficking of North Korean women into China when they were detained, but other reports said they were reporting on North Korean refugees who had fled their country. The exact circumstances of their arrest remain unclear.
President Obama was “deeply concerned” by reports of the sentencing, the White House said in a statement Monday. The United States is “engaged through all possible channels to secure their release,” the statement said.
The human rights group Amnesty International sharply criticized the legal procedures behind the sentencing and called for the journalists’ immediate release. “No access to lawyers, no due process, no transparency: the North Korean judicial and penal systems are more instruments of suppression than of justice,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director.
In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists described the sentence as “deplorable” and called on all participants in the six-party talks on North Korea — both Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States — to work together for the women’s release.
Ms. Ling’s father, Doug Ling, spoke briefly to The Associated Press at his home outside Sacramento, California on Monday, saying the family was “going to keep a low-profile until we hear something better about the situation.” >>> By CHOE SANG-HUN | Monday, June 08, 2009
