FIONA BRUCE WELCOMES BBC ANNOUNCEMENT TO
BROADCAST INTO NORTH KOREA
Fiona Bruce MP,
Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, has today
welcomed the announcement by the BBC to set up a daily broadcasting programme
into North Korea.
Fiona Bruce
MP said “This is a
hugely positive development, and follows lengthy campaigning by Members of
Parliament and others, and it is heartening that the BBC has listened to calls
over the past few years to engage with the oppressed people of North Korea in
this way. North Korea is the most persecuted country on earth; its human rights
violations are without parallel in the 21st century – as documented
in the recent UN Commission of Inquiry chaired by Mr Justice Kirby – with
hundreds of thousands of its own people incarcerated in concentration camps,
many for speaking even briefly in opposition to their government.
‘The example
of unfettered free speech, and the picture of an outside world, which the BBC
has offered to oppressed societies across decades is unparalleled, and has had
real impact in how helping to change them. As we have heard from testimonies of
those who lived in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania and Burma –
broadcasting into those countries from the BBC encouraged and inspired millions
during their darkest days to understand what a free society looks like, and
educated many for future leadership.
‘Over recent
years advancements in new technologies mean that increasingly the information
blockade in North Korea which has enabled the Government there to keep a stranglehold
on their people’s understanding and thought-processes is cracking – and
broadcasting by the BBC has the potential to make this crack a huge fissure –
let us hope it is the beginning of the end of over sixty years of suffering for
the North Korean people.’
Fiona
Bruce MP, House of Commons Speeches, North Korea:
2.
21st
October 2013, included: ‘I think that we would all accept the importance of
the BBC’s role as a key instrument of soft power in promoting universal values—human
rights, the rule of law and democracy—and would accept that, at its best, the
BBC World Service is a beacon of hope and a voice of freedom for the oppressed
throughout the world. Broadcasting into North Korea would enable the people
there who are victims of the most egregious and repressive regime in the world
to know that they are not forgotten.
‘I
hope that Members will forgive me if I remind them for a moment of the
atrocities that occur in North Korea, and of why it is so important for us to
shatter the wall of communication isolation that has afflicted the North Korean
people for well over three generations. There are beginning to be cracks in
that wall, largely owing to the advancement of technology. I think it important
for the BBC to be at the forefront of that, rather than lagging behind.
Only
last week our media reported that humans were being used as guinea pigs in
North Korea, and that whole families were being placed in what were effectively
glass boxes so that chemical weapons could be tested. That is cruelty beyond
imagination, but it is just one example of what is happening in that country.
People are being steamrollered to death, children are being starved to death,
and thousands more are wandering the streets without parents. The children of
prisoners are being treated as prisoners from birth. Hundreds of thousands are
being held in gulags, many simply because of their beliefs or for making a
cursory statement against the regime. Many are literally worked to death in
prison factories, sleeping at their machines. A vast number of people are
starving. Aid is being misappropriated at borders, never reaching those for
whom it is intended. Those who succeed in escaping—which is rare—may lose their
lives in the process, and three generations of their families may be threatened
with imprisonment, perhaps for life. In short, they are the most persecuted
people on earth.
Surely
we should use our soft power through the BBC World Service to uphold human
rights, democracy and the rule of law, and to develop this nation into one that
we would see as habitable for human beings, not the nation we know of today.
The cost of that would be a fraction of the £100 million lost from the BBC
through the digital media initiative, not to mention the high celebrity
salaries and executive pay-offs.
The
all-party group held a meeting some months ago with Peter Horrocks, director of
global news, including the World Service, and he kindly agreed to look into
this suggestion. I contacted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office some time
later and received a letter in response in March 2013 from the Minister of
State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire). He confirmed
that Mr Horrocks had
“agreed
to look into the suggestions that the group made in more detail. I understand
that this work is ongoing. The BBC has committed to updating the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office and the APPG once this work has been completed. I do not
want to prejudice that update and look forward to hearing more from Mr Horrocks
on this in due course.”’
3.
16th
December 2013, included: ‘Given that a major weapon in ending Stalin’s reign
of terror was the role that this country played by broadcasting the BBC World
Service and breaking the Soviet information blockade—the same has been done
more recently with the Burmese information blockade—and given the Foreign
Secretary’s role in setting the World Service’s strategic objectives, will the
Minister consider extending the BBC World Service to the Korean peninsula?’
“We are delighted to welcome
Fiona and have the opportunity to update her about our work. Working
collaboratively with our partners and community members is crucial if we are
really going to make a difference in supporting people to live and die well. 