SEOUL (UCAN) - The South Korean government is not sincere about promoting human rights, because it granted amnesty to only 94 out of 294 political prisoners, the Catholic Priests' Association for Justice says. "We cannot help expressing regret over the government's announcement that says political prisoners who refused to sign a law-abiding pledge were excluded from the release," the priests said in a statement Aug. 14.
Earlier in the day, Justice Minister Park Sang-cheon told the press that the government excluded North Korean spies and leftist activists who refused to sign an oath to abide by the law from the special presidential amnesty.
The amnesty affecting 7,007 people took effect on Aug. 15, Liberation Day, commemorating the end of Japanese colonialism in 1945 and this year the 50th anniversary of the founding of the nation in 1948. A prior announcement said that 94 political prisoners who had signed the oath would be freed.
The priests said they believed that President Kim Dae-jung had earnestly intended to release prisoners of conscience, but introduced the controversial law-abiding pledge to avoid political attack by conservatives. A "conversion letter" renouncing communist ideology and action had been required previously. They said that while coup perpetrators and "dirty politicians" who accepted bribes received amnesty and freedom, most political prisoners remain in jail because they did not sign the pledge. "Furthermore, the 94 released prisoners of conscience are still to be monitored under the Security Observation Law, which means that the government does not have any sincere intention to improve human rights," they added.
The Korea Conference of Religion for National Reconciliation and Unification, a group of Buddhist and Christian religious figures, said it is regrettable that the government freed only a third of the political prisoners. Its Aug. 14 statement called the move "immoral conduct, trampling down the people's desire for social reform."
London-based human rights monitor Amnesty International also called on President Kim Aug. 14 not to make the release of political prisoners "conditional on signing an 'oath' to respect the law." It added that more than 100 people had been arrested under the country's National Security Law since Kim's government came to power last February.
A Justice Ministry official told UCA News Aug. 14 that "imprisoned communist spies or collaborators who refuse to give up their intention to spread communism in our country are not referred to by us as prisoners of conscience. We cannot release them unconditionally."
North Korea attacked South Korea on June 1950, triggering the three-year Korean War that devastated the whole peninsula with millions of casualties, and sent armed spies to the South continuously since, he added.
UCAN 20. august 1998