European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 21, 2007, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Wednesday March 21 2007 stars and stripes Page is opinion North Korea builds bombs but not Bridges by Kay Seok Seoul North Korea is again dominating headlines by signing a Deal to close its main nuclear reactor and allow International inspectors to return in Exchange for Energy and economic assistance As North Korea watch ers cautiously Welcome this possible step to Ward a nuclear free korean Peninsula a deeply disturbing development has garnered almost no attention Pyongyang hardening policy toward North korean Bor Der crosses in an ominous reversal North Korea has apparently scrapped its 2000 decree that it would be lenient toward citizens who Ille Gally crossed the effect almost everyone leaving the country to China to find food or earn Money to feed their families according to recent Borders rosters interviewed by human rights watch Pyong Yang has implemented harsher punish ments for those repatriated the North koreans interviewed recounted the chilling language officials use to de scribe the policies the North reinstated per haps As Long ago As late 2004 those crossing the Border without state permission wont be forgiven no matter Why they went to China or what they did there including firs time offenders the hardening policy shows How Pyong Yang is violating the obligations it undertook when it signed major human rights conventions in the 1990s North Korea is denying its citizens their fundamental rights by preventing them from freely leaving the country arresting those who make such an attempt and arbitrarily detaining mistreating torturing and sometimes even executing Borders rosters who Are repatriated China too regularly flouts its obligations under the 1951 in refugee convention by Labelling All North koreans illegal economic migrants and sending them Back Many of these North koreans crossed the Border because the state failed them North Korea claims to have a socialist system under which All citizens receive free food education medical care and housing but the reality is that Only the country elite enjoy such privileges the rest of the population is left to fend for itself undertaking the dangerous and difficult journey to China is a form of Sel defense the North korean government fails to feed its people but then persecutes them for try ing to survive a 59yearold North korean woman told us about her deportation from China and punishment in North Korea her crime she had left without state permission which is considered an act of treason i went to China because i had no food at Home but i had to live in hiding there so i tried to go to South Korea she said i was caught the chinese police took All the Money i saved they beat and kicked me when i was sent Back to North Korea things got even worse they made me strip and a doctor searched my Vagina to see if i hid any Money they could confiscate they treated me like an an Imal because they considered me a traitor font revw9 Bap behaviour nth Bow vim w behaviour after serving a prison sentence she escaped to China again in september a 42yearold woman from Haejun said she was deported from China in december 2003 and served 18 months in a North korean labor Camp every Day i saw someone dying we were Given a fistful of powdered Corn stalk three times a Day and people had trouble digesting it Many people died after having diarrhoea for a week she said they left patients in the hallway outside toilets so Many people died they wrapped bodies in plastic sheets and buried them in a Mountain the world should pay attention not Only to North Korea responsibilities under the new nuclear disarmament agreement but also to Pyongyang responsibilities to its own people North koreans Are forced to flee their country when the state has failed them the rest of the world should not fail them As Well Kay Seok is North Korea researcher at human rights watch this column first appeared in the Washington Post terrorist used Day in court to exploit us strategy by Rosa Brooks what timing just when the attorney general and the president were coming under fire for the politicized dismissals of eight us attorneys the Pentagon released a Tran script of a March 10 hearing in which Guantanamo Detainee Khalid sheikh Mohammed confessed to masterminding the sept 11 2001 attacks now we can get Back to the Bush administrations preferred topic what a Heck of a Job its doing in the War on terror Kim is a Nasty piece of work in the Tran script he claimed credit not Only for the sept 11 attacks was responsible for the operation from a to but for More than 30 other plots from the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl to a plot to assassinate former us presidents in fact theres almost nothing to which Kim didst confess but if the administration Hopes to regain lost political capital by shifting the Conversa Tion Back to terrorism and Kim the strategy might backfire if anything isms re cent performance highlights the Downside of the Bush administrations pos sept 11 decision to declare War against Al Aida it goes without saying that military action May at times be required to combat Wellde fended terrorist organizations based in for eign states but As a policy matter the War on terror framework has been a predict Able disaster for the United states it led to a counterproductive Over Reliance on military Force an under appreciation of the role of politics and Community identity in sustaining terrorist organizations and a dangerous anything goes approach to intelligence gathering that encompassed secret detentions and torture most ironically the War on terror Frame work has Lent legitimacy to terrorist leaders such As Kim enabling them to present themselves As warriors standing up against a powerful and hypocritical us Mili tary machine at his Guantanamo hearing Kim was Quick to exploit what he termed the Lan Guage of War in not Happy that 3000 been killed in America he piously in formed the military tribunal but in War you have to toll the us he implied is re ally not so different from Al Aida just con Sider the innocents killed by us bombard ments by Way of further illustration Kim slyly offered the following i know Ameri can people Are torturing us and i know it is against american Laws but they said every Law they have exceptions this is your bad Luck you have been part of the exception a Laidas tactics he suggested Are the same to drive Home his Point Kim compared himself to George Washington if the British had arrested Washington he noted for sure they would consider him enemy combatant isms claim of moral equivalence might go Over Well with people alienated by pos sept 11 us policies but it is dangerously misleading us failures and abuses Are real and should be condemned by All of us but nothing justifies the deliberate Slaughter of innocents the attacks on the world Trade Center and the Pentagon were neither legitimate acts of War nor some excusable exception but a hideous crime a mass murder of appalling dimension from the beginning the Bush administration should have called terrorism what it is an ambitious form of lethal and Complex criminality that at times requires a military response As Well As a political and police response and it should have called Kim what he is not an enemy combatant in a War but a brutal criminal someone who As human rights watch John Sifton puts it deserves the same Fate As child molesters and serial killers ignominious trial and conviction putting Kim on trial As the criminal he is would not have precluded us military action against Al Aida targets on foreign Terri tory but it would have made it harder for Kim to wrap himself in the Mantle of a free Dom fighter and present himself As a combatant comparable to George Washington the sept 11 commission report noted the grandiose nature of isms True ambitions he intended to Hyack 10 planes on sept 11 crashing nine and Landing the 10th at a us Airport then after killing All adult male passengers on Board and alerting the Media Kim planned to deliver a speech excoriating the United states what he longed for was theater a spectacle of destruction with Kim As the self cast Star last week at Guantanamo Kim finally got his theatrical Opportunity the Chance to stand before a military tribunal and proudly accept the Mantle of enemy combatant in a Laidas War against the us by declaring War on terrorism the Bush administration ended up playing right into his hands los Angeles times columnist Rosa Brooks is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center she is on a leave of absence while working on a Book prickly City by Scott Stantis