China's hi-tech 'death van' where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold on black market

By Andrew Malone

Death will come soon for Jiang Yong. A corrupt local planning official with a taste for the high life, Yong solicited money from businessmen eager to expand in China's economic boom.

Showering gifts on his mistress, known as Madam Tang, the unmarried official took more than £1 million in bribes from entrepreneurs wanting permission to build skyscrapers on land which had previously been protected from development.

But Yong, a portly, bespectacled figure, was caught by the Chinese authorities during a purge on corrupt local officials last year.

He confessed and was sentenced to death. China executed 1,715 people last year, so one more death would hardly be remarkable. 

Disguised: The execution vehicle looks like a normal police van

But there will be nothing ordinary about Yong's death by lethal injection. Unless he wins an appeal, he will draw his final breath strapped inside a vehicle that has been specially developed to make executions more cost-effective and efficient.

In chilling echoes of the 'gas-wagon' project pioneered by the Nazis to slaughter criminals, the mentally ill and Jews, this former member of the China People's Party will be handcuffed to a so-called 'humane' bed and executed inside a gleaming new, hi-tech, mobile 'death van.'

After trials of the mobile execution service were launched quietly three years ago - then hushed up to prevent an international row about the abuse of human rights before the Olympics last summer - these vehicles are now being deployed across China.

The number of executions is expected to rise to a staggering 10,000 people this year (not an impossible figure given that at least 68 crimes - including tax evasion and fraud - are punishable by death in China).

Developed by Jinguan Auto, which also makes bullet-proof limousines for the new rich in this vast country of 1.3 billion people, the vans appear unremarkable.

They cost £60,000, can reach top speeds of 80mph and look like a police vehicle on patrol. Inside, however, the 'death vans' look more like operating theatres.

Executions are monitored by video to ensure they comply with strict rules, making it possible to describe precisely how Jiang Yong will die. After being sedated at the local prison, he will be loaded into the van and strapped to an electric-powered stretcher.

This then glides automatically towards the centre of the van, where doctors will administer three drugs: sodium thiopental to cause unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and, finally, potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Death is reputed to be quick and painless - not that there is anyone to testify to this. The idea for such a 'modern' scheme is rooted in one of the darkest episodes in human history.

The Nazis used adapted vans as mobile gas chambers from 1940 until the end of World War II. In order to make the best use of time spent transporting criminals and Jewish prisoners, Hitler's scientists developed the vehicles with a hermetically sealed cabin that was filled with carbon monoxide carried by a tube from the exhaust pipes. 

The vans were first tested on child patients in a Polish psychiatric hospital in 1940. The Nazis then developed bigger models to carry up to 50 prisoners. They looked like furniture removal vans. Those to be killed were ordered to hand over their valuables, then stripped and locked inside.

As gas was pumped into the container and the van headed towards graves being dug by other prisoners, the muffled cries of those inside could be heard, along with banging on the side.

With the 'cargo' dead, all that remained was for gold fillings to be hacked from the victims' mouths, before the bodies were tipped into the graves.

Now, six decades later, just like the Nazis, China insists these death vans are 'progress'.

The vans save money on building execution facilities in prisons or courts. And they mean that prisoners can be executed locally, closer to communities where they broke the law. 

The Nazi gas van: It killed up to 50 prisoners at a time

'This deters others from committing crime and has more impact,' said one official.

Indeed, a spokesman for the makers of the 'death vans' openly touted for trade this week, saying they are the perfect way to 'efficiently and cleanly' dispatch convicts with lethal injections. Reporting steady sales throughout China, a spokesman for Jinguan Auto - which is situated in a green valley an hour's drive from Chongqing in south-western China - said the firm was bucking the economic trend and had sold ten more vans recently.

The exact number in operation is a state secret. But it is known that Yunnan province alone has 18 mobile units, while dozens of others are patrolling in five other sprawling provinces. Each van is the size of a specially refitted 17-seater minibus.

'We have not sold our execution cars to foreign countries yet,' beamed a proud spokesman. But if they need one, they could contact our company directly.'

Officials say the vehicles are a 'civilised alternative' to the traditional single shot to the head (used in 60 per cent of Chinese executions), ending the life of the condemned quickly, clinically and safely - proving that China 'promotes human rights now,' says Kang Zhongwen, designer of the 'death van'.

It seems a perverse claim, but certainly the shootings can be gruesome. Once carried out in public parks, these executions -sometimes done in groups - have seen countless cases of prisoners failing to die instantly and writhing in agony on the ground before being finished off.

There are other concerns: soldiers carrying out the shooting complain that they are splashed with Aids-contaminated blood. After the shooting, relatives are often presented with the bullet hacked from the condemned's body - and forced to pay the price of the ammunition.

While posing as a modernising force in public, Chinese leaders remain brutal within their own borders. They are, however, anxious to be seen to be moving away from violence against their own people, stressing that all judicial decisions have been taken out of the hands of vengeful local officials and must be ruled on from Beijing.

China has traditionally always taken a ruthless, unemotional view of crime and punishment. Before injections and bullets, the most chilling sentence was death by Ling Chi - death by a thousand cuts - which was abolished only in 1905.

The condemned man was strapped to a table and then, in what was also known as 'slow slicing', his eyes were gouged out.

This was designed to heighten the terror of not being able to see what part of his body would suffer next. Using a sharp knife, the executioner sliced at the condemned's body - chopping off the ears, fingers, nose and toes, before starting to cut off whole limbs.

Traditionalists insisted that exactly 3,600 slices were made. The new mobile execution vans may, indeed, be more humane than this, but their main advantage in official eyes is financial. 

Gordon Brown and China's President Hu Jintao meet in China in 2008

According to undercover investigations by human rights' groups, the police, judiciary and doctors are all involved in making millions from China's huge trade in human body parts.

Inside each 'death van' there is a dedicated team of doctors to 'harvest' the organs of the deceased. The injections leave the body intact and in pristine condition for such lucrative work.

After checking that the victim is dead, the medical team first remove the eyes. Then, wearing surgical gowns and masks, they remove the kidney, liver, pancreas and lungs.

Little goes to waste, though the heart cannot be used, having been poisoned by the drugs.

The organs are dispatched in ice boxes to hospitals in the sprawling cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which have developed another specialist trade: selling the harvested organs.

At clinics all over China, these organs are transplanted into the ailing bodies of the wealthy - and thousands more who come as 'organ tourists' from neighbouring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

Chinese hospitals perform up to 20,000 organ transplants each year. A kidney transplant in China costs £5,000, but can rise to £30,000 if the patient is willing to pay more to obtain an organ quickly.

With more than 10,000 kidney transplants carried out each year, fewer than 300 come from voluntary donations. The British Transplantation Society and Amnesty International have condemned China for harvesting prisoners' organs.

Laws introduced in 2006 make it an offence to remove the organs of people against their will, and banned those under 18 from selling their organs.

But, tellingly, the law does not cover prisoners.

'Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way using these vans than if the prisoner is shot,' says Amnesty International.

'We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of Chinese police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade.'

The bodies cannot be examined. Corpses are driven to a crematorium and burned before independent witnesses can view them.

A police official, who operates a 'multi-functional and nationwide, first-class, fixed execution ground' where prisoners are shot, confirmed to the Mail that it is always a race against time to save the organs of the executed - and that mobile death vans are better equipped for the job.

'The liver loses its function only five minutes after the human cardiac arrest,' the officer told our researcher.

'The kidney will become dysfunctional 30 minutes after cardiac arrest. So the removal of organs must be completed at the execution ground within 15 minutes, then put in an ice box or preservation solution.'

While other countries worry about the morality of the death penalty, China has no such qualms.

For the Beijing regime, it is not a question of whether they should execute offenders, but how to do it most efficiently - and make the most money from it.

British couple attacked on Thai sailing trip

BahtandSold

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A British man sailing with his wife off the coast of southern Thailand was allegedly beaten to death and thrown overboard by men trying to steal their dinghy, Thai police said Tuesday.

Police arrested three migrant workers from neighbouring Myanmar whom they accused of attacking Malcolm Robertson and his wife, Linda, Monday on their yacht anchored off the coast of Satun, a southern province bordering Malaysia.

"They tried to steal the dinghy and beat Mr. Robertson with their fists and hammers until he died," Police Colonel Virat Ohn-song, chief of the La-ngoo district police station, told Reuters.

He said police were searching for the body.

The British embassy in Thailand said it was assisting Linda Robertson, who suffered minor injuries.

"We are aware of an attack overnight on a British couple off the coast of Satun in southern Thailand. We are urgently pursuing this case with the Thai police," an embassy spokesman said.

Fishermen had reported the yacht apparently adrift. When police investigated, the three suspects tried to flee in the dinghy and were arrested, Virat said.

Thailand is one of the world's most popular tourist destinations, luring some 14 million tourists annually, with Britain the biggest Western market.

(Reporting by Kittipong Soonprasert; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Paul Tait)

Jury rules against South Korean star for $8M

AP – South Korean pop star and actor Rain.

By JAYMES SONG, Associated Press Writer Jaymes Song, Associated Press Writer

HONOLULU – South Korean pop star and actor Rain and his managers on Thursday were ordered to pay a Hawaii promoter more than $8 million in damages for canceling a 2007 concert in Honolulu.

A federal jury found Rain, his agency JYP Entertainment Co. and two South Korean promotion companies breached a contract to perform and defrauded Click Entertainment Inc.

Nearly $5 million was for punitive damages, with Rain and JYP each ordered to pay $2.4 million. An additional $1 million was awarded for damages related to the fraud and $2,286,000 was given for breach of contract.

"That was the best we certainly could've hoped for under the circumstances," Click attorney Eric Seitz said. "I hope they send a message that people can't do the kind of things that this entertainer and his agents did. I think he received very bad advice. ... The decisions here were just horrible."

The judgment is expected to trigger several lawsuits across the United States where the star abruptly canceled shows two years ago. A similar lawsuit was recently filed in Los Angeles, where Rain's concert at the Staples Center was scratched a couple hours before show time.

"We're obviously very disappointed with the jury's decision in this matter," Rain's lead lawyer, Jon Crocker, said. "We maintain our position that both JYP and Rain fulfilled all their obligations with regard to the Hawaii performance. We will continue to vigorously defend them, wherever these promoters bring these baseless lawsuits."

Rain's concert was canceled just days before the scheduled June 15, 2007, event at Aloha Stadium, where tickets were sold for as much as $300 each. It was supposed to be the first stop on the "Rain's Coming" U.S. tour.

The jury reached the verdict Thursday after deliberating for more than a day.

Click President Seung Su Lee testified that he lost nearly $1.5 million because of the cancellation, which also damaged his business reputation. He argued that Rain and his traveling entourage of 90 people never intended to perform in Hawaii, saying the crew never applied for proper visas or shipped their equipment.

Rain — whose real name is Jung Ji-hoon — testified for 90 minutes, saying he had every intention of performing and that he had no hand in the cancellation.

Crocker argued the contract Lee had was not with Rain or JYP. It was with a company named Revolution Entertainment, owners of the North American rights to Rain's concerts, he said.

The lawyer also said a proper stage wasn't created for the star in addition to Rain being unable to use his name in the United States because of a copyright challenge from a Beatles tribute band named Rain.

The 26-year-old Rain is widely popular across Asia where his smooth dance moves have earned him the nickname "the Justin Timberlake of Asia." He also gained popularity for his roles in Korean TV drama series.

In 2006, Time magazine named him one of 100 most influential people in the world.

Rain has been dabbling in Hollywood in recent years. He is scheduled to appear in a leading role in the upcoming action film "Ninja Assassin," directed by James McTeigue and co-produced by the Wachowski brothers. Rain made his Hollywood debut last year in a supporting role in the brothers' film "Speed Racer."

2 US journalists detained in NKorea

AP – North Korean Army soldiers watch the South side at the border village of Panmunjom, South Korea

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer Kwang-tae Kim, Associated Press Writer – Thu Mar 19, 2:49 pm

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean soldiers detained two American journalists near the country's border with China, South Korean news reports and a South Korean missionary said Thursday.

The journalists — Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based online media outlet Current TV — were taken into custody Tuesday, a missionary who spoke to them earlier that day told The Associated Press.

The Rev. Chun Ki-won of the Seoul-based Durihana Mission said by phone from Washington that he was told that the two women were detained with a guide hired in China to assist them. Chun, a South Korean activist who helps North Korean refugees seek asylum, refused to reveal his sources.

He said North Korean soldiers detained the two but that it was not clear whether this took place on the North Korean or Chinese side of the border. He later said sources told him a third American member of the crew, a cameraman, escaped arrest "at the last minute."

In Washington, an official said the State Department was aware of reports that two American citizens were taken into custody near the Tumen River in northeastern North Korea.

"We are working with the Chinese government officials in the area to ascertain the whereabouts of the Americans in question," press officer Fred Lash said. "We also have been in touch with North Korean authorities to express our concern about the situation."

He said U.S. officials were in contact with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, North Korea's capital. It represents Washington because the U.S. does not have direct relations with North Korea.

In Beijing, where North Korean Premier Kim Yong Il was meeting with senior Chinese government officials, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said officials were "investigating the issue involving relevant U.S. nationals on the border between China" and North Korea.

In San Francisco, Current TV said it would not immediately comment on the situation.

Ling is a sister of Lisa Ling, a former co-host of the American TV talk show "The View" and now a field correspondent for Oprah Winfrey.

The reported detentions come at a time of heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula, with North Korea announcing it will shoot a satellite into space next month using rocket technology in defiance of a U.N. Security Council ban.

Some fear the launch is a cover for the test-fire of a long-range missile.

South Korean media first reported the detentions early Thursday, with YTN television saying two Americans were arrested near the Tumen River. The Yonhap news agency, citing unidentified diplomatic sources, said North Korean soldiers took them into custody after they ignored orders to stop filming.

Chun, providing the reporters' identities, said he met the two in Seoul recently to help them plan their trip to the border to report on North Korean refugees and last spoke to them by phone Tuesday morning. The women told him they were in the Chinese border city of Yanji and were heading toward the Yalu River near the Chinese border city of Dandong, he said.

The Tumen and Yalu rivers are frequent crossing points for both trade and the growing number of North Koreans seeking to flee their country. Chun's group for years has helped North Korean defectors hiding in China and Southeast Asian countries seek asylum in the U.S. and South Korea.

Chun said he arranged for the reporters to meet with North Korean defectors in South Korea and China but warned them to stay away from border areas.

"I told them very clearly not to go to the border because it's dangerous," he said.

Current TV, co-founded by Al Gore, devotes much of its programming to viewer-created short programs called "pods." It won an Emmy last year for best interactive television service.

Ling, apparently sending updates about her trip to the online site Twitter, wrote Saturday that she was at the Seoul airport en route to the "China/NKorea border."

"Hoping my kimchee breath will ward off all danger," she wrote.

Three days earlier, she wrote: "Spent the day interviewing young N. Koreans who escaped their country. Too many sad stories."

The most recent entry, from Monday, simply read: "Missing home." The username for "lauraling" does not say she is a reporter for Current TV, but the person appearing in the profile photo appears to be the same person profiled on the Current TV site.

The Chinese-North Korean border is porous. Famine in North Korea and an economic boom in China have proved an attractive combination for the tens of thousands of North Koreans crossing into China in search of food, medicine, jobs or escape.

The Chinese government complains about the incidents, but most incursions are dealt with quietly, if at all. Chinese living on the border say North Korean spies have long acted with impunity when policing or trying to retrieve their own people.

Foreign journalists standing on the Chinese side of the border are often jeered at by North Korean border guards, some brandishing rifles just steps away.

South Korean missionaries assisting North Korean refugees are also at risk. In 2000, the Rev. Kim Dong-shik was kidnapped from a Chinese border city and taken to North Korea.

In 1996, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, then a congressman, went to North Korea and helped secure the release of an American detained for three months on spying charges. In 1994, he also helped arrange the freedom of a U.S. soldier whose helicopter had strayed into North Korea.

Associated Press writers Gillian Wong and Alexa Olesen in Beijing and Jean H. Lee in Seoul contributed to this report.

Rabid mutts claim three lives in Bangkok

Hot dogs and rabies
Rabid mutts claim three lives in Bangkok; free vaccination and sterilisation for strays offered

Construction sites are the worst hotspots for rabid dogs, said Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) Health Office deputy chief Wanthanee Wattana yesterday.

Rabies has claimed the lives of three people in Bangkok this year, in Wang Thong Lang and Bang Khunthien districts, compared to the previous rate of just one death for each of the past two years, she said. One of the victims in Bang Khunthien was a youth bitten by a puppy at a construction site, she said. In the summer heat, dogs were more prone to attack people approaching them, which meant a higher risk of catching rabies in the hot season, she added.

Construction site danger

A survey has found that construction sites carry the biggest risk, as workers often raise dogs without having them vaccinated and let them roam freely. The BMA has started providing free rabies vaccinations and sterilisation for pet dogs to try and deal with the problem.

The Prawet Animal Control Centre reports that each day it gets about 30 complaints of stray dogs and captures between four and 30. The district with most complaints in the period from last October until this February was Bang Kapi at 79 cases, closely followed by Lat Phrao at 73 cases and Chatuchak and Bang Khen at 65 cases. The centre currently holds 250 stray dogs.

BahtandSold

Seeking justice, Chinese land in secret jails

Police officers outside Majialou, a detention center for people who come to Beijing petitioning seeking redress of grievances. (Du Bin for The New York Times)

By Andrew Jacobs

BEIJING: They are often tucked away in the rough-and-tumble sections of the city's south side, hidden beneath dingy hotels and guarded by men in dark coats. Known as "black houses," they are unofficial jails for the pesky hordes of petitioners who flock to the capital seeking justice.

This month, Wang Shixiang, a 48-year-old businessman from Heilongjong Province, came to Beijing to agitate for the prosecution of corrupt policemen. Instead, he was seized and confined to a dank room underneath the Juyuan Hotel with 40 other abducted petitioners.

During his two days in captivity, Wang said, he was beaten and deprived of food, and then bundled onto an overnight train. Guards who were paid with government money, he said, made sure he arrived at his front door.

As Beijing hosts 10 days of political pageantry known as the National People's Congress, tens of thousands of desperate citizens are trying to seek redress by lodging formal complaints at petition offices. A few, when hope is lost, go to extremes, as a couple from the Xinjiang region did last week: they set their car afire on the city's best-known shopping street, injuring themselves critically.

In his annual report to the legislature on Thursday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said China should use its petition system to head off social unrest in the face of a worsening economy. "We should improve the mechanism to resolve social conflicts, and guide the public to express their requests and interests through legal channels," he said.

According to the state media, 10 million petitions have been filed in the last five years on complaints as diverse as illegal land seizures and unpaid wages. The numbers would be far higher but for the black houses, also called black jails, the newest weapon local officials use to prevent these aggrieved citizens from embarrassing them in front of central government superiors. Officially, these jails do not exist.

In China's authoritarian state, senior officials tally petitions to get a rough sense of social order around the country. A successfully filed petition — however illusory the prospect of justice — is considered a black mark on the bureaucratic record of the local officials accused of wrongdoing.

So the game, sometimes deadly, is to prevent a filing. The cat-and-mouse contest has created a sizable underground economy that enriches the interceptors, the police and those who run the city's ad hoc detention centers.

Human rights activists and petitioners say plainclothes security officers and hired thugs grab the aggrieved off the streets and hide them in a growing constellation of unmarked detention centers. There, the activists say, the aggrieved will be insulted, roughed up and then escorted back to their home provinces. Some are held for weeks and months without charge, activists say, and in a few cases, the beatings are fatal.

The police in Beijing have done little to prevent such abuses. They are regularly accused of turning a blind eye or even helping local thugs round up petitioners. That raises suspicions that the central government is not especially upset about efforts to undermine the integrity of the petition system.

The petition system provides people with the semblance of an appeals process that top leaders hope will keep them off the streets. But for officials at all levels, it seems, the appearance of order — measured by reducing the number of petitions — is an acceptable approximation of actual order.

Rights advocates say that black houses have sprouted in recent years partly because top leaders have put more pressure on local leaders to reduce the number of petitioners reaching Beijing. Two of the largest holding pens, Majialou and Jiujingzhuang, can handle thousands of detainees who are funneled to the smaller detention centers, where cellphones and identification cards are confiscated.

China's petition system originated in the Ming Dynasty, from the 14th to the 17th centuries AD, when commoners wronged by local officials sought the intervention of the imperial court. Since the Communist Party came to power, the right to petition the central government has been enshrined in the Constitution.

With few legal channels available, petitioners come to Beijing, saying it is their only hope for resolving grievances.

"I know my life is in danger, but I just can't swallow this injustice," said Wang, explaining why he has made 10 trips to Beijing in recent years, each ending in detention.

Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an organization in Hong Kong that recently interviewed more than 3,000 petitioners, has documented what it says is the lucrative business of abduction and repatriation. "When you're taken to a black jail, no one knows where you are and you are totally vulnerable," said Wang Songlian, a researcher.

The authorities insist that there is no such system. During testimony to the United Nations Rights Council last month, Song Hansong, a representative of China's Supreme People's Procurate, said, "There are no such things as black jails in our country."

But over the past year, rights workers have been gathering evidence of what they say is an underground network of jails, first established in 2005, that was aggressively expanded in the months leading up the Olympics.

Alarmed by their unchecked spread, a group of lawyers has taken to organizing citizen raids that seek to free detainees through a show of force. Although they say instances of extralegal detention dropped after the Summer Games, one of the lawyers, Xu Zhiyou, said they had risen sharply in recent days, coinciding with the start of the annual legislative session.

He and other advocates say that armies of paid retrievers, euphemistically known as "liberators," have been roaming the city in pursuit of as many as 40,000 petitioners, many of whom swarmed the entrances to the city's main petition centers during much of the week.

By Friday, however, the tough-looking throngs of retrievers outside the State Council and supreme court petition offices appeared to outnumber would-be petitioners, whose worn shoes and sacks of paperwork make them easy prey.

Wu Lijuan, a seasoned petitioner from Hubei Province, said she helped coordinate more than 10,000 former bank employees who came to Beijing from across the nation last week. She said most of the petitioners, middle-aged women seeking greater compensation for their dismissals, were rounded up outside the main petition office and loaded onto buses.

Those who escape the dragnets are often betrayed by employees at the very offices designed to process petitions. Sun Lixiu, 51, a farmer from Sichuan Province, said a clerk at the State Council petition office asked for her ID card, handed back an application form and then tipped off retrievers, who took her to a black jail.

"No one can be trusted," said Sun, who is seeking to free her husband from the local police station, where he has been held since July, after accusing town officials of embezzlement.

The financial rewards for apprehending petitioners can be irresistible. According to a directive obtained by Chinese Human Rights Defenders, the police in one Hunan Province county are authorized to spend nearly $300 for each successfully detained petitioner.

The money ends up in the pockets of the retrievers, corrupt petition clerks, and those who run the black jails. The organization said that officers in one Beijing police precinct demanded as much as $140 for each petitioner they turned over to provincial interceptors.

The story of Wu Bowen, 61, a retired shop clerk from Zhejiang Province, is typical. On Feb. 25 she came to the capital to file a petition seeking more compensation for the demolition of her home. The next day, as she sat on the curb, a policeman told her that as an out-of-towner, she had to register at the precinct.

Once there, however, the officer phoned the Zhejiang Province liaison office in Beijing. A short time later, a clutch of retrievers escorted her to a hotel not far from the city's main tourist attractions.

After nine days of confinement, Wu stole back her cellphone and revealed the hotel's address to her son, who called the offices of The New York Times.

When three men reluctantly opened the door to Room 208 at the Zhanle Hotel, Wu cried out for help. Confounded by the presence of foreign journalists, the men seemed unable to prevent Wu from escaping, although they begged her to stay, saying she could not leave until a local county official arrived with their reward money.

Out on the street, Wu was shaken but undeterred. Asked if she wanted to be taken to the train station so she could return home, she shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm going to stay in Beijing until I get justice."

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting.

Korea's forgotten women

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

After decades as pariahs, some aging women have begun speaking out about their experience as prostitutes in camp towns constructed around American military bases in South Korea. Claiming they were victims of South Korean governmental policies, the women are seeking compensation and an apology from their leaders. Above, Bae, a former such sex worker, in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Jeon said she was an 18-year-old war orphan in 1956 when hunger drove her to Dongduchon, a camp town near the North Korean border. "Looking back, I think my body was not mine, but the government's and the U.S. military's," she said. Whether prostitutes by choice or need or coercion, the women say, they were all victims of governmental policies.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Bae has been suffering from asthma for the past seven years and lives on welfare. The camp town women have compared themselves to the so-called "comfort women" of Japan, who have won widespread public sympathy for being forced into prostitution by the Japanese during World War II.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

A view of a night life district near Osan Air Base, an American military base, in Pyeongtaek. These days, camp towns still exist, but few Koreans work there; Filipinas and some Russians replaced them as the South Korean economy took off.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

About twenty of the former sex workers attend services weekly at the Sunlit Sisters' Center in Pyeongtaek. The center advocates the rights of camp town women, many of whom live in poverty, isolated from mainstream society and missing their mixed-blood children who were put up for adoption overseas.

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Jeon, 71, returning home with a cart of recyclables. She lives on welfare checks and earns a little selling scrap cardboard from other people's trash. She had a son in the 1960s, but became convinced he would have a better future in the United States and gave him up for adoption when he was 13. About 10 years ago, her son, a U.S. soldier, returned to visit. She told him to forget her. "I failed as a mother," she said. "I have no right to depend on him now."

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

The women received some support for their claims. In 1960, two South Korean lawmakers urged the government to train a supply of prostitutes for Allied soldiers who protected South Korea from the communist North. And in 1977, a lawmaker urged the government to portray the prostitutes as "women warriors" to acknowledge their contributions to the Korean economy. Left, Bae holding a picture of herself when she was 29 years old.

BMA completes probe into Santika Pub inferno

 

BahtandSold

 

 

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration's probe into the Santika Pub inferno that killed 66 people and injured many others on New Year's Eve has found district officials from the public works office as well as district director guilty of not inspecting the building, a BMA source said yesterday.
The investigation committee submitted a 1,000-page report to city clerk Pongsak Semsan on Monday. After summoning some 15 involved officials, the committee concluded that there were three faults: the consideration of the permit before it was issued; building inspection during construction; and inspection of the building's modification.
The committee also found that the pub's building did not comply with the blueprint submitted and that the owners had not sought permission for modifying the building, nor did they apply for a permit for the usage of the building, the source said.
In other words, the club owners had not obtained any permits for the building.
As for inspection during construction, the committee said it suspected it had not been studied by the public works, thus deeming it a negligence of duty, despite officials' claims of having done so.
As for taxes, the committee only inspected taxes that directly involved BMA, namely property and land taxes, and found that the faults in this aspect did not compare to the faults with the building.
City officials also presented the committee with documents warning the club owner to pay taxes between 2005 and 2008, which means the officials had done their duty, the source said. Besides property and land taxes could be collected as far back as ten years thus its statute of liberty was still active.
The source said the committee identified officials involved in the case, which included district public works officials and their supervisor.
Deputy Bangkok Governor Prakob Jirakitti said he was told that the investigation report had been completed but hadn't seen the report yet because it had probably been sent to the city clerk first. He confirmed that if any officials were identified as being at fault, they would face legal action.

 

 

 

City officials face investigation

 

 

The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration inquiry committee looking into alleged corruption involving the Santika pub has found five officials have a case to answer over disciplinary offences, a source at City Hall says.
Three were accused of serious disciplinary offences and the other two of minor breaches.
The panel has reported its findings to Bangkok city clerk Pongsak Semsan but yesterday he refused to comment.
The source said those accused of serious disciplinary offences were a public works chief, a building control section chief and a building inspector who has already retired. They are accused of recklessly violating the Building Control Act.
The panel found the pub was not built according to the blueprint submitted to the BMA, while the pub operator did not seek approval for modifications to the pub.
The two others are the director of Watthana district where the operator of the Santika sought approval for the building and a building inspector who took Santika's blueprint from the district office in 2007 and lost it, the source said.
The five will be notified of the alleged offences.
The city clerk will then appoint another disciplinary panel to investigate the allegations. If found guilty, those accused of committing serious disciplinary offences could be fired from the BMA or transferred.
Those transferred would still be eligible for a pension. Those dismissed would go without.