The following petition, written in three languages (Korean,
Japanese and English), was circulated and
signed by legislators, NGO members and attendees at the Conference.
After the signatures were gathered, the petition
was sent to the office of Roh Moo-Hyun, president of South Korea.
Choi Yong-hun, a South Korean humanitarian aid worker, was arrested
in January 2003 and sentenced to five years in prison for attempting
to help North Korean refugees in Yantai, China. He is still in
a Chinese prison, where he has been held unjustly for more than
2 years and a half, while the international community watches
and wonders why you have forgotten him.
Jubilee Campaign USA, who submitted the petition for Choi Yong-hun
to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, received the
opinion from them in July, 2005, stating that the deprivation
of liberty of Choi Yong-hun is “arbitrary.” The Working
Group is requesting that the Chinese government take action to
rectify this misapplication of its justice system.
The South Korean government must emphatically protest the Chinese
government’s illegal arrest and long detention of Choi
Yong-hun.
We strongly urge the government of South Korea to demand that
the Chinese government immediately release Choi Yong-hun.
