Displaying items by tag: justice

Behailu Kebede, in whose flat the Grenfell Tower fire broke out, was scapegoated by the media and wrongly blamed for failing to raise the alarm. Pray that all such false reporting is revealed and innocent individuals are exonerated. Leslie Thomas QC claimed the failures of management of Grenfell stemmed from the way social housing was stigmatised; attitudes and stereotyping allowed cost-cutting and the use of deadly materials to become normalised. Michael Mansfield QC called for the inquiry to make urgent recommendations to ensure that tower blocks are safe, claiming the fire was foreseeable and criticising the Government’s failure to implement the coroner’s recommendations after the Lakanal house fire in 2009. He called for the imposition of a regulator on the construction industry to overturn its ‘non-compliance mindset’, and attacked Government-backed red tape for regarding safety as a ‘hindrance to profit-making.’

In 2012, International Justice Mission (IJM) began a project in Uganda to improve the legal response when criminals attempt to steal from widows. An IJM study showed that nearly one in three widows had their property stolen from them after their husbands died. When they narrated their personal experiences, widows commonly described perpetrators threatening and physically assaulting them. 18.3% of victims reported that attempts were made on their lives, and 31.6% had threats made against their children by perpetrators. In the study’s review of police case files, more than half of property grabbing cases included physical violence. IJM are now evaluating the successes, failures and overall impact of their project so that they can develop a strong national programme to protect women and children in Uganda from violence.

Dear President Trump,

Thank you for taking the time to hear my plea for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

I was a US prisoner of the Kim Jong-il regime from December 2009 to February 2010. The sole reason why I entered North Korea via Hoeryung city on Dec. 25, 2009 was to call attention to human rights violations that have occurred against innocents in the region and to demand better conditions -- conducive to life -- for North Koreans.

On a personal level, I have been profoundly wounded and suffered loss on an incalculable and irretrievable scale as a result of these efforts to highlight the North Korean populace’s severe victimization and unjust suffering. Accordingly, I sincerely beg that whatever you decide to do in concert with South Korean authorities and the international community that none of the ordinary people of both North and South Korea will ever get hurt; Koreans have already endured and sacrificed far too much.

It’s been brought to my attention that persons who have advised you and are within your administration profess to be Christians. Please kindly be reminded that a large number of underground Christians are within North Korea. They are the most persecuted religious group in the world, according to multiple watchdogs of religious rights internationally. As I pray your team accepts upon deep reflection, it would be decidedly un-Christian to countenance indiscriminate killings of those who are among the people in the world who suffer the most.

As was recorded by a 2013 United Nations Commission of Inquiry, an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 “Christians still professing their religion secretly” despite “high risks” are in North Korea today.

Another ethical dilemma vis-a-vis military strikes would be that North Korea’s political prison camps -- where thousands of Christians are imprisoned and suffering grievously -- are near weapons of mass destruction facilities and test sites.

For instance, as was written in the above-cited UN report: “Political Prison Camp No. 16 covers about 560 square kilometres of rugged terrain in Myonggan, North Hamgyong Province. It is located in close proximity to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. ... The GeoCoordinates for the central area of Camp 16 are 41.1849N 129.2032E.”

Furthermore, an estimated 10 million Korean families were heartbreakingly severed by the brutal realities engendered through Korea’s division. Fewer than 1 percent have been permitted to see or even hear from their missing or displaced loved ones to date. As the artificial border became fixed, whether Koreans discovered themselves in the North or the South amid the tumult and upheaval of the period was in innumerable cases but a question of chance.

The South’s President Moon Jae-in -- like a multitude of South Koreans, Korean-Americans and other Koreans worldwide -- has family in North Korea.

Therefore, it is my sincere and tearful prayer that you, Mr. President, would take into serious consideration these excruciatingly painful and unresolved tragedies, while honoring the moral imperative to determine a peaceful resolution vis-a-vis the security predicament.

We must remember Kim Jong-un disallows North Koreans all of the basic freedoms most of us take for granted. North Koreans of all classes and backgrounds are not permitted to read what they wish. Neither are they able to travel freely within their own territory. Going abroad is simply out of the question for the overwhelming majority. Punishments in retaliation for being caught with books such as the Bible, or accidentally speaking out of turn or appearing irreverent, for example, are draconian and routinely deadly. These are but a few of the reasons the whole area is often referred to as a single enormous prison.

High-level escapee Thae Yong-ho, who defected to the South last year with his immediate family, characterizes North Korea as a “gigantic slave society that exists only for the hereditary succession of the Kim family.” Although once among Kim Jong-un’s most entrusted -- having been Pyongyang’s diplomat in London for 10 years -- he bravely declared subsequent to escaping, “I am very determined to do everything possible to pull down the regime to save not only my family members but also the whole North Korean people from slavery.”

There are countless individuals -- even among North Korea’s elite and military -- who confidentially share Thae’s hunger and thirst for reform and transformation within the North today. I know this with certainty.

Here is my earnest, wholehearted and tearful plea to you, Mr. President: Please unconditionally preserve the lives of both North and South Korea’s general population. Under no circumstances -- if international laws, norms and principles professing to safeguard innocents’ most sacred right to life contain any substance -- can the loss of their lives be tolerated.

There is a thoroughly workable and peaceable solution to the North Korea crisis. It involves reaching out to the general populace of North Korea in sympathy and supporting their internal unseating of Kim Jong-un -- one individual. This procedure must be accompanied by the freeing of all political prisoners -- who are victims of crimes against humanity and possibly genocide -- which can be achieved via the mediation of those North Koreans who assume interim administrative responsibilities in the immediate aftermath of Kim’s indigenous and peaceful ouster.

Elite or senior-level defections are conspicuously rising. The South’s Ministry of Unification recently reported that this year, North Korean elites -- including party officials, diplomats, and university professors -- are defecting twice as often as in 2016. Numerous members of the North’s military have been defecting to the South as of late, as well. Countless more have died while attempting to flee.

In July, an elite-level family of five -- including a former North Korean party official, his wife, son and two daughters -- struggled courageously to defect to the South. They carried poison with them to kill themselves -- as an alternative to Kim Jong-un’s systematic cruelty -- if Chinese authorities forcibly repatriated them. Heartbreakingly, these refugees deserving of protection were apprehended en route. To avoid inhumanity and torture, all five members of this senior-level family committed suicide.

As Thae Yong-ho has emphasized, high-ranking North Koreans are in actual fact slaves and are suffering gravely also.

The overwhelming majority of North Koreans hope and yearn to be reunified with the South, to live in a gentler and more egalitarian society and to bid adieu to Kim Jong-un. Those who suggest otherwise, Mr. President, unfortunately retain an inaccurate assessment of the overall situation on the ground.

Accordingly, we must reach out to the North Korean people if a peaceable solution is veritably what we seek. The native and nonviolent ousting of Kim Jong-un is distinctly achievable.

I’ve been praying through an outpouring of tears and wholeheartedly plead for you and your administration to remember the acute suffering and unparalleled victimization of tens of millions of warm-hearted, gentle and benevolent North Koreans -- who deserve compassion and require grace -- and to please pursue a peaceable answer with regard to the security quandary.

Thank you once again for your time and attentiveness to the above concerns.

By Robert Park

Robert Park is a founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to Stop Genocide in North Korea, minister, musician and former prisoner of conscience. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. -- Ed.

More people are in slavery today than at any other point in history. Over 45 million men, women and children are locked in slavery as you read this email. But there is hope.

We're inviting you to join us in Saturday 4th November at St. Paul's Hammersmith London for our National Prayer Gathering as we seek to start the biggest move of prayer to end slavery that the UK has ever seen!

Hear Saroeun Sek tell his incredible story of leaving his job as a nightclub DJ to become Director of Legal at IJM when he witnessed the brutality of slavery, with worship from the amazing Christian singer songwriter Lucy Grimble.

We believe in the power of prayer so we're asking you to join us in petitioning our God of justice to act, to join us as we fight to bring light into some of the world's darkest places. God is calling us to rise up -to repair and rebuild what is broken, to bring restoration, and fight to see the end of slavery for good.

The end of slavery requires a move of God's people. That movement starts with us. So sign up, share and join the fight. Thank you for standing with us until all are free.

Book your ticket

On 28 June the Crown Prosecution Service announced that six people will face trial for the Hillsborough disaster - including match commander David Duckenfield and former chief constable Sir Norman Bettison. Duckenfield, 72, faces trial for the manslaughter by gross negligence of 95 of the 96 Liverpool fans who died at the FA Cup semi-final in 1989. Bettison, 61, faces four charges of misconduct in a public office, including two of lying about his role to further his career. However, the FA and Sheffield Wednesday FC avoided action, despite the withering assessment of their conduct which emerged in the Hillsborough Independent Panel (HIP) investigation of 2012. Families of the Hillsborough victims broke into applause when they were told Duckenfield faces charges. Margaret Aspinall, whose son James died in the tragedy, said: ‘No-one should have to go through what the families have gone through for 28 years to try to get to the truth.’

A worker for International Justice Mission (IJM) writes, ‘Please pray for our aftercare team who are teaching children rescued from slavery in Ghana about their rights to freedom. It became clear that many had no concept of what it meant to have rights under Ghanaian law, or that the law should protect them from abuse. Our aftercare team partnered with a Ghanaian artist to create a beautifully illustrated curriculum called ‘I Am Worthy’, which talks about rights in a way that children can understand. Pray that this curriculum will help survivors understand their own stories and believe in their inherent dignity and worth. We can praise God that a partnership has been formed between IJM and the Anglican Church of Uganda. The church’s vision of opening legal chambers will grow its role in serving widows and orphans in the community, by providing legal services to victims of property-grabbing.’

International Justice Mission is a global organisation that protects the poor from violence in the developing world. Their global team includes more than 750 lawyers, investigators, social workers, community activists and other professionals at work through 17 field offices.

Pray for IJM as they fight a new but devastating form of slavery in the Philippines: the cybersex trafficking of children. It involves the live sexual abuse of children, most under the age of 10. Before the internet, predators had to physically go to into a bar or a brothel to purchase sex. Now, paedophiles can abuse children without ever leaving their home. For this, reason, cybersex trafficking is harder to track down than traditional trafficking, as the abuse can happen anywhere there is an internet connection and a webcam, or simple a mobile phone. Find out more here.

• Pray for the IJM investigators as they work with police to locate the abuse, and that they would be able to successfully rescue and protect these children.
• Pray for the physical and emotional healing of those who’ve already been rescued, and for specialised aftercare facilities that can meet the long-term needs of both these young girls and boys.
• Pray that we would be able to catch not only the traffickers in the Philippines, but the paedophiles around the world (including from the UK), who are paying to direct the abuse.

A Zimbabwean pastor who criticised his government has been detained after flying back to the country. Evan Mawarire, who left the country last year in fear for his life, was arrested at Harare International Airport. He first came to fame last April when he went on Facebook wrapped in a Zimbabwean flag complaining about the state of the nation. It sparked a #ThisFlag protest movement against the leadership of the country. In July, protesters staged a national ‘shutdown’ which led to a complete closure of schools, businesses and shops across the country. It was the biggest strike action since 2005. Mr Mawarire was arrested and charged with inciting public violence, but a court ruled that police had violated his rights and released him. He left the country soon after, and had been in the US for about six months. At the airport, Mr Mawarire ‘was escorted into another room by three men even before he went through immigration or customs’, his sister Telda said. It is reported that he was then taken to a police station in the centre of Harare.

Last week, after more than three years in jail, a Christian facing the death penalty on charges of blasphemy was granted bail by the Supreme Court in Lahore. Adnan Prince had been imprisoned in Lahore’s district jail since November 2013 after he was accused by a work colleague of insulting Islam, the Qur’an and Islam’s prophet. The three-man bench ordered the release of Prince, with bail set at Rs 300,000 (around £2,300). According to Mr Prince’s lead counsel, the case against her client should have been decided within two years. This did not take place due to lawyers’ strikes and delaying tactics by the prosecution, she said. She also explained that legal formalities were not fulfilled; guidelines passed by the Supreme Court say that a police officer of at least the rank of superintendent should have conducted the investigation. She added that there were no direct eyewitnesses and that all forensic evidence failed to link the accused. Although earlier bail applications had been dismissed by both a district judge and the Lahore High Court, the Supreme Court granted Prince bail and ordered his release. Similar cases have been known to take as long as seven years to reach trial.