Dying for Rights Quotes

“North Korea is one of few countries in the world that conducts public executions and is one of twenty- one countries that carry out executions. By retaining the death penalty and the arbitrary use of it, North Korea is in violation of the right to life. Through the arbitrary use of execution, North Korea is also violating the prohibition against the arbitrary deprivation of life.Conducting executions publicly is not compatible with respect for human dignity.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“North Koreans are prevented from accessing rights because of geopolitical dynamics in the region and the inability to make the covenants of international human rights law binding. At the precise moment when North Koreans engage individual agency, when they throw off the net of their nation, which does not protect their rights, the international community confronts its inability to do anything. Precisely at the point when North Koreans lose everything— home, networks, statehood - is when they need human rights the most. And yet it is at this moment of being and having nothing but their humanity that they cannot gain access to human rights. They move from a place where their rights were not protected to a bigger space within the “family of nations” that excludes them from basic legality and basic humanity. This is the recurring contradiction at the heart of human rights. States are the primary abusers of rights, and yet they are also tasked with being the primary protectors of human rights. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt observed this flaw in 1951. Departing from the one nation to which they belonged, refugees are cast on the shores of the global network of nation-states. In that sphere, Arendt notes, they are compelled to engage in illegality to gain legality. There are few means of achieving legality in a world that has cast you out of legality altogether. The North Korean migrant is pushed into one of two situations. Either she transforms herself into a spectacle, hyper-politicizing her actions in order to achieve recognition of her being,pressing states to recognize her. Or she lives in shadows, waiting, hoping she may one day safely access legality.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“Contrary to how it may look, McEachern finds that North Korea is not a “one-man rule” state. He explains, “While Kim is certainly the most important political player in North Korea, he still must rule a complex political system and should not be understood as the system.” McEachern describes North Korean politics as “a type of highly centralized monarchy with some court politics at the top.” Drawing on North Korean media, elite speeches, and commentaries available through federal deposit libraries in the US, McEachern shows that the party, military, and cabinet contend for specific institutional interests within North Korea.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“Songbun can be imagined as a political ethnos, people who are grouped according to their perceived loyalty to the leadership. Hostile elements are on the lowest end of this political-ethnos spectrum, and one of the tasks of loyal North Koreans is to weed out the hostile elements. In such a frame, human rights may be viewed by lower Songbun individuals as something preserved for the elite. The elite may view the international community’s desire to bring “western imperialist” rights as an effort to grant rights to undeserving political criminals.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“You can find the effects of the division in the bones of people born on either side of the 38th parallel. In 2011 researchers measured height differences in Koreans born prior to and after the division of the Korean Peninsula. When they examined the height of 6,512 defectors in South Korea, they found that North Koreans born before the division of the Korean Peninsula were taller than their South Korean peers. Combined with this, and more damning still, they found that all “North Korean cohorts born thereafter were shorter than their South Korean counterparts.” What could possibly be more nutritious in the South? Politics.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“You can find the effects of the division in the bones of people born on either side of the 38th parallel. In 2011 researchers measured height differences in Koreans born prior to and after the division of the Korean Peninsula. When they examined the height of 6,512 defectors in South Korea, they found that North Koreans born before the division of the Korean Peninsula were taller than their South Korean peers. Combined with this, and more damning still, they found that all “North Korean cohorts born thereafter were shorter than their South Korean counterparts.”7 What could possibly be more nutritious in the South? Politics.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“What the Korean War gave to those who survived was a personalized story of agony for every family and generation on down the line, North and South.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record

“…respect for rights, and their violation, occurs as a plurality. Within this plurality, certain rights bear relation to each other: the failure to uphold one means the other will also fail. Rights are symbiotic; they are mutually supportive. The same occurs when they are violated.”
― Sandra Fahy, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record