North Korea's Decade With Baby Dictator

"All people and soldiers should have absolute trust in the general secretary, have their fate and future completely entrusted to him and guard his safety and authority."

"He is, indeed, the greatest man and the great sage of the revolution all the people on this land follow with their deep affection and sincerity."

State Rodong Sinmun newspaper

"He has tried to differentiate himself from the reigns of his father and grandfather. [Including] legitimizing his own leadership by establishing an ideological system of 'Kim Jong-unism'[ that is centered on 'Our People First' 'Our Nation First' and self-reliance."

"At the same time, he has been using the same old brutal playbook to maintain power and control over officials."

Duyeon Kim, adjunct senior fellow, Centre for a New American Security, Washington, D.C.

"To a certain extent, he [has] ruled by fear, as we saw from Jang's brutal execution, and the unusually frequent personnel shuffles in the top echelons of the military in the first few years of his leadership."

"[He is] backed up by a powerful system that has withstood all sorts of storms since the founding of North Korea."

"It also has to do with a clever leadership strategy. This is a man who values pragmatism and understands the importance of keeping up with the times to stay competitive and improve the people's living standards."

Minyoung Lee, Seoul-based non-resident fellow, 38 North Program, Stimson Centre, Washington

Citizens visit the bronze statues of their late leaders Kim Il Sung, left, and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, on the occasion of 10th anniversary of demise of Kim Jong Il.  VOA

 

The tenth anniversary of the death of North Korean former leader Kim Jong-il saw a ceremonial service where thousands of people paid their respects to the former leader, with his son Kim Jong Un in attendance. Footage televised by KCTV showed Kim visiting his father's mausoleum, standing on a platform with crowds of people below, on the palace grounds in Pyongyang.

 

Flags at half mast, the thousands gathered at the annual memorial bowed silent heads, portraits of the country's former leaders, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung facing them. A ten-day period of remembrance for the "Great Leader" was officially ordered, a ban on alcohol, on laughter, on any overt signs of happiness ordered. Police ordered to look for signs of disobedience to the ban and to arrest any that dared to contravene the ban. Involuntary smiles to be suppressed on pain of incarceration.

The occasion of the tenth year since the death of the former leader of North Korea also marks the tenth year of the ascension of his son, Kim Jong Un who assumed the post of supreme leader at age 29 on his father's sudden death of a heart attack. Kim appears to have met all the yardsticks and then some of strong leadership, North Korean-style. Presenting himself as a brutal oppressor, a ruthless tyrant, but a loving dictator to his people.

The internal palace intrigues have presented no problem to this scheming tyrant who hasn't hesitated to order the murder of anyone who he believed to have challenged his authority or nurse aspirations to take his place. He has achieved some milestones beyond what his father and grandfather managed in meeting with a U.S. president, with the president of South Korea, and establishing a personal relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Loving his people so deeply he defied international sanctions in his ongoing bid to develop nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. That the expense involved in these enterprises meant that much of his population lives in poverty and episodes of food and energy scarcity erupt time and again does not appear to give him sleepless nights. 

This loving supreme leader ordered the imprisonment and then the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek who, with his wife, had avuncularly taken the young Kim under his wing as he ascended to the leadership, guiding and encouraging  him, before he became strangely persona non grata when Kim appeared to view him as an adversarial threat. 

Even his half-brother Kim Jong-nam was not immune to suspicion as a possible usurper of Kim's place as supreme leader. So a rather awkward and amateurish plot to assassinate him with the lethal VX nerve agent was carried out in 2017. Academics studying his regime of 'benevolent' dictatorship give him credit for modernizing state television programming, for introducing economic reforms, and for inclusion in his speeches of the 'people'.

North Korea continues to be a hermit kingdom, one engrossed in building a nuclear stockpile, catering to the neuroses and paranoia of a man fascinated by military weapons of mass destruction and seeing no reason whatever why his impoverished nation should possess such weapons to prove to the world what a global power it represents. While during the pandemic the nation's rudimentary health care system is close to buckling.

 

KCNA

State AirJacking and Abduction

"The captain suddenly banked and went downward, then he came on the intercom and said, 'Unfortunately, we have to land in Minsk', for reasons he did not explain."

"He [air passenger] suddenly stood up and tried to give  his phone and his laptop to the woman who was with him. And he began to tell the people around him, 'No, we can't land in Minsk, they will arrest me'."

Ryanair flight 4978 from Athens to Vilnius, Lithunia, passenger

"They took the boy aside and shook his belongings on to the runway. We asked him what was going on."

"He said what it was and added, 'The death penalty awaits me here'."

Passenger, Ryanair flight 4978

Lithuanian passenger Mantas (centre, front) said Mr Protasevich "made a mistake" giving his laptop to his girlfriend   Reuters

 

A regularly scheduled flight, a low-cost passenger flight popular among middle-class people in Lithuania, budget-driven tourists who plan a holiday on the Mediterranean. Among the 126 passengers on board Sunday's flight from Athens to Vilnius was a young pair living as refugees from Belarus, in Vilnius. He, Roman Protasevich, 26, a journalist, and she, 23-year-old Sofia Sapega, a professional photographer studying at the European Humanities University. Returning from an assignment where they decided to use the opportunity to take a break in the sun.

The journalist was a hunted man. Designated by the Belarusian military government of Alexander Lukashenko as a terrorist. The sham election that 're-elected' Lukashenko in a hugely unlikely landslide, back to the presidency last summer after 26 years in dictatorial power, occasioned large, vociferous opposition and ongoing street protests. Harshly and violently put down, until protests were exhausted of their furious oxygen. 

 

And Roman Protasevich was a protest organizer and news editor as well as journalist, placing him in very bad odour with the Lukashenko government. He was acutely aware that the political leader of Belarus was interested in apprehending him. It was why he left Belarus. The pair had accompanied the Belarusian self-exiled (for self-protection) opposition leader Sviatiana Tsikhanouskaya to the Delphi Economic Forum on assignment in early May. 

When the plane's pilot gave no explanation for his decision to divert the plane to land in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, the plane passengers were stunned and alarmed, many fearing a bomb aboard the plane, others that something had gone mechanically wrong and they were in deep trouble. Only Mr. Protasevich knew what was happening: "We can't land there. They are going to arrest me"!, he was heard to exclaim.

 

Mr Protasevich was charged with terrorism and inciting riots after covering the events of the 2020 Belarus presidential election  Getty Images

 

He had, in fact, spoken with a friend about the potential dangers of overflying Belarus, with his wanted status in mind. It was only when he and  his girlfriend were in the act of boarding the plane back to Vilnius that he experienced the first of a series of peculiar incidents; each one a warning signal. Standing at the check-in queue behind him was a Russian-speaking man who used his phone to quickly photograph the journalist's documents as he presented them to the check-in, and then quickly disappeared.

 

Others remained in the queue, silently watching, taking note of everything; Belarusian KGB agents. In flight, the aircraft continued at cruising altitude, maintaining speed at a point in time when it would generally have started its descent to Vilnius. Two minutes before entering Lithuanian airspace where it was scheduled to land in Vilnius in another ten minutes, there was an abrupt turn. If it was an emergency landing, Vilnius was a lot closer than Minsk, where the pilot now headed the aircraft toward.  

"We all on the plane had panicked because we thought we were going to crash."

"This was a sudden dive, changing the altitude very drastically. It was very violent. I've never felt this on an airplane. Everybody was in shock."

Lithuanian passenger Raselle Grigoryeva

While passengers excitedly speculated between themselves what might have occasioned the swift decision to deviate from the expected route, they were unaware that a Belarusian MiG-29 had ordered the change of course as it intercepted the Ryanair flight. When that happened, the young journalist leapt into action, desperately attempting to persuade the crew to return to its original flight pattern, to no avail. 

Once landed in Minsk and everyone deplaned, both young people, the journalist and the photographer were seen in loose custody, while the KGB authorities made an effort to divert attention from an obvious kidnapping taking place by making a show of document-checking all passengers despite the security officers having no obvious interest in the other passengers. "It was obviously not why we landed", remarked a passenger.

Journalist and photographer were soon closely escorted out of sight where each was placed in a waiting SUV. Six hours on, the passengers and crew were given permission to leave, landing in Vilnius 35 minutes later. It was noted that three other passengers had remained behind in Minsk and speculation that they were Belarusian or Russian KGB agents that followed the couple was rife. 

The plane was diverted on an emergency basis reflecting orders from a missive authorities had received warning of a bomb ostensibly placed on board by the terrorist group Hamas. according to Minsk authorities. Hams, no less. Whoever thought that one up was evidently flailing around for anything that might sound feasible, despite that the group their imagination conjured up, was anything but likely to be involved. 

 

Supporters of Mr Protasevich await him at Vilnius airport with a sign reading: "I am, we are Roman Protasevich"    PETRAS MALUKAS/GETTY IMAGES

 

Whoever posited that scenario felt, with good reason, that revealing that the Belarusian tyrant had given explicit orders to divert the plane else it would be shot down, would not go down well. Inspired, perhaps by the Ukrainian passenger jet that had been shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as it left the airport in Tehran, Iran. Or the Malaysian passenger jet shot down by ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

 

Tyrants of all stripes care little of what the world thinks of them.

A video was posted online on Monday where Roman Prostasevich is seen to assure he is in good health, although no one knows where he is being held. In the video he speaks of having played a role in organizing mass protests last year in Minsk. That he is under duress is beyond doubt. As for Ms.Sapega, she is being held, it is believed, at the notorious Okrestina prison in Minsk, and what will  happen to them both is now anyone's guess.

"Victory Belongs to the Faithful" : Erdogan

 

Monday, July 25, 2016

"Victory Belongs to the Faithful": Erdogan

"[This] raises troubling questions, if accused people are seen on television or photos bearing clear traces of physical violence."
Steffen Seibert, German government spokesman

"Right now law is suspended. We see investigations going on without any rule of law. Yes, the military intervention was stopped, the military dictatorship was stopped, but right now we see they are trying to build a civilian dictatorship."
Sercan Aran, deputy head, Ankara Bar Association human rights commission

"We are doing everything according to the law."
"The idea that Turkey, a country seeking European Union membership, would not respect the law is absurd."
"All we care about is concrete evidence of complicity in this grave assault."
Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity 

"If they try to record signs of torture, they face threats and violence from the police. A colleague that tried to photograph evidence of torture was made to erase the photos."
Doguan Togue Cankurt, lawyer, Ankara

"There are a litany of abuses that have been reported to us. There are serious allegations of widespread mistreatment and mutually corroborating reports going beyond beatings to high levels of abuse."
"And if they [Turkish authorities] don't have concrete evidence, they shouldn't be detaining them [detainees suspected of association with Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Erdogan accuses of leading the coup]."
Andrew Gardner, researcher, Amnesty International

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

In Ankara, crowds chant: "Here is the army, here is the commander!" calling out for the government to reintroduce the death penalty for coup plotters. Which their president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, beaming benevolently at his faithful supporters, is most pleased to consider. Serendipitously, it was his very own thought, as well. And as a skilled manipulator of public opinion and support for himself, one can only wonder at the coincidence.

The international community looks on with fascination at the images of bruised and battered prisoners, those detained who appear, strangely, to have been violently mishandled in their prison cells. Germany in particular, suffering its own hell paved with good intentions, is hoping that Turkey's crisis will soon be settled, bloodlessly, so as to have minimal impact on Ankara's agreement to stem the flow of migrants into Europe.

For the moment, and perhaps for a much longer moment in time, longer than the three months stated, Turkey will remain in a state of emergency. A state that confers upon Mr. Erdogan unlimited powers of discretionary decision-making. Required, of course, to enable him to counter threats to Turkish democracy, which he has carefully been protecting in the exemplary manner he has become famous for, particularly among the judiciary, the military and the news media.

Now, his democratic credentials have been extended with tender, loving care to the thousands of civil servants, lawyers, police, military personnel and incautious citizens who have been foolish enough to think that a canny politician like Erdogan could be defanged so easily. What it brings to mind for those who are historical-minded is the Spanish Inquisition and Stalin's Great Terror; it is utterly amazing what gentle persuasion to peoples' better natures can produce in self-incriminatory confessions.

"The rationale for the Great Terror was the supposed discovery of a diabolical conspiracy whose object was nothing less than the destruction of the Soviet Union, a notion that echoes the rationale of the Inquisition in its long war on heresy The conspirators were accused of putting themselves in service to the worst enemies of the Bolshevik Revolution, including Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. The reality is that 'the whole alleged plot was a vast cycle of frame-ups by Stalin and his entourage' all of it intended to eliminate his rivals and strengthen his authority as the absolute dictator of the Soviet Union. Significantly, the arch-villains in Stalin's show trials were men whose roles in the Bolshevik Revolution had been equal to or arguably even greater than his own, including Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and Nikolai Bukharin."
Jonathan Kirsch, The Grand Inquisitor's Manual

Has a familiar ring to it, don't you think? Fethullah Gulen was an Erdogan confidante and supporter. Until the time came when he was disgusted with the corruption of the Justice and Development Party and its Islamist leader. Said to be more moderate an Islamist than Erdogan they had a parting of the ways. And the socially, culturally, religiously influential Gulen departed in self-exile, out of the menacing reach of Erdogan. That hasn't stopped him from pressuring the U.S. for extradition so he can place the cleric on trial in democratic Turkey.

President Erdogan informs his public that the state of emergency in Turkey will counter threats to Turkish democracy. Even his opponents and other Turkish political parties swallowed that hook. His true critics are swinish enough to urge restraint, however, fearing basic freedoms will be violated. Of course, the Justice and Development Party (that most Orwellian of language usage) didn't need a declared state of emergency to proceed with mass arrests, mass firings, closure of hundreds of Gulen-linked schools, come to think of it.

Courage beyond the line of civil duty is being exhibited by the Ankara Bar Association with its 24-hour hotline and crisis centre, where terror-stricken Turks can reach out to find out where their missing relatives are. And when they are informed where their loved ones are being held incommunicado and without legal representation, they are also admonished not to attempt to visit them: "Don't go", they are told, "they aren't letting anyone visit".

In defence of democracy, needless to say.

Islamicizing Turkish Children

"Do you expect that a [political] party with a conservative, democratic identity would raise an atheist youth?"
"You may have such an aim, but we [Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party] don't."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey speaks with supporters in Ankara. (Murat Cetinmuhurdar/AP)

"The [controversially violent demons] film teaches [vulnerable young students that] if you renounce your faith you will have this horror [visited upon you as punishment from on high]."
"They [the current government] are stealing the children's future."
Erdogan Delioglu, Istanbul parent

"....Turkish officials have broken with decades of precedent in what is still, at least nominally, a secular republic: they have begun describing the country’s military deployment in Syria as 'jihad.' During the first two days of the operation, which began on Jan. 20, the government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs ordered all of Turkey’s nearly 90,000 mosques to broadcast the 'Al-Fath' verse from the Koran — 'the prayer of conquest' — through the loudspeakers on their minarets. Mainstreaming jihad, which sanctions violence against those who “offend Islam,” is a crucial step in draping the sheath of sharia over a society. Sadly, Turkey seems to be slowly moving along that path."
"In recent years, the government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been limiting individual freedoms, as well as sanctioning individuals who “insult Islam” or neglect Islamic practices. Since November 2017, the national police — controlled by the central government — has been monitoring online commentary on religion and suppressing freedom of expression when they find such commentary 'offensive to Islam'."

"Education is a prime pillar in Erdogan’s efforts to throw a membrane of sharia over the country. Turkey’s education system, like the police, falls under control of the central government, and the Ministry of Education has been pressuring citizens to conform to conservative Islamic practices in public schools."

"The government is formally inserting religious practices into the public education system by requiring all newly-built schools in Turkey to house Islamic prayer rooms. Recently, for instance, a local education official in Istanbul demanded that teachers bring pupils to attend morning prayers at local mosques."

Soner Cagaptay, senior fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

'The bottom line is: generations who ask questions, that's what the government fears'

REUTERS/Umit Bektas

There can be little doubt that Recep Tayyip Erdogan was disappointed in the results of the last election when his Islamist party lost clout in their majority status, and so did he, which he made up for by attaining a majority government only with the aid of an alliance with another Turkish Islamist party, but acting as though the people of Turkey had given him and his party carte blanche to completely change Turkey's traditional secularist, democratic politics from the Kemalist model to the new, vibrant and triumphant Erdogan model.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, historically the hero of Turkey who turned his country away from Islamic backwardness to face Europe and constitutionally adapt to democracy is now a has-been model, with Erdogan's vision of a Sharia-based Islamist Turkey in the ascendancy. The country remains locked in the national emergency situation that Erdogan imposed on it in the wake of the unsuccessful attempt at removing him and his government through a military coup. Tens of thousands of Turkish police, justices, lawyers, journalists, teachers, unionists, military and others accused of plotting to overthrow his government have been imprisoned.

  
Public schools are being closed without warning, replaced by religious schools. Presidential diktat has scrapped exams, and tens of thousands of public teachers have been dismissed while religious groups have been enabled without teaching certificates to teach in schools completely lacking parental consent. Erdogan's June 24 re-election gives him the confidence to continue apace with his plan to continue the state of emergency and institute wholesale changes in the nation's constitution; its political, social, educational and religious character.

His indomitable will to completely remake Turkey in his own image, and his steady transfer of authority into his own hands now unchallenged sees him moving forward to that end, to create a population steeped in religious devotion from an early academic stage to his fundamentalist view of Islam and its place in every aspect of Turkish life. Leading parents around the country to protest his changes, while doing whatever they can to find schools of their choice to entrust the future of their children with in a standard, Western-style curriculum.

Turkey is destined to become Erdogan's private republic in homage to Islamist ideals. He intends to "raise a pious generation", claiming that religious schools represent a democratization of education, reversing "discrimination" that prevailed under the secular republic. It should be pointed out that the main presidential challenger, Muharrem Ince himself, sought to make the issue of religious schools his own, considering them to be important to the nation, but that attendance should be optional, in hopes of uniting the electorate in his favour.

Imam Hatip religious schools are now replacing secular public schools. While they make use of the national curriculum, half of the educational courses are religious in nature, core classes remain the Quran and Arabic. All of which more than explains just how and why it is that Muslim countries remain backward, failing to advance socially, educationally, technologically, with an emphasis on basic human rights and equality. Under Erdogan these religious schools have expanded from the 450 that existed fifteen years ago to the 4,500 that currently exist nationwide.

Among the aspiring middle class of Istanbul and other major Turkish cities parents complain of Erdogan's aggressive agenda to push religious instruction for their children, identifying that very instruction as deceptive, and damaging to normal educational standards. As a result, parents withdraw their children from religious schools to send them to private schools or alternately make do with technical and vocational schools. And according to the Education Ministry, 69 percent of places in Imam Hatip schools are unfilled, yet the schools keep proliferating.

A class of twelve-year-olds was exposed to a film in the Imam Hatip school so violent and frightening, with an abundance of punishing demons that parents said their children had nightmares. Despite the complaints, the film remains on the curriculum ostensibly to 'teach' children the punishment that demons mete out to insufficiently pious children failing to take their Koranic lessons seriously enough.

Protestors march with placards reading "enough! Don't turn our schools to Imam Hatips" in Kadikoy in Istanbul (AFP)

Saudi Arabia invested in madrassas, religious schools built with vast oil reserve profits all over the Muslim world to teach impressionable young Muslims Islamist values. Often in a language they could neither speak nor understand; Arabic. But these schools' alumnae formed the basis for the jihadi groups later formed to torment the world as terrorist groups, from al-Qaeda to the Taliban, Al Shabab to Islamic State. Turkey is planning on its own home-made jihadi graduates to spread the word of Islam and glorify it.