NHRCK has declared a statement, signed by Chairperson Young-hoang Cho, that it pays attention to Rae-gun Park and Baek-gi Cho who were arrested while staging a demonstration against the moving of the US forces to the city of Pyeongtaek. The followings are the major points laid out in the statement.
First, the Commission urges that everyone should be considered innocent until it can be proved that the person is guilty as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We, at the NHRCK, believes that the two human rights activists should not be subjected to arbitrary arrest detention as clearly guided by the Constitutional Law as well as the spirits of international human rights practices.
Second, the Commission confirms that whether the individual’s possession of guilty feeling or possibility of committing the same crime cannot be the reason for arrestment. If so, all people who take action according to their own conscience should have been arrested.
The two human rights activists were arrested with the reason that “they showed no feelings of remorse by rejecting to fingerprint and using the right to remain silent.” It simply cannot be the reason for arrest, and the Commission is regrettable to see the human rights consciousness in our society is so backward.
Thirdly, on the basis that everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law; the Commission recognizes the seriousness of the recent arrest of human rights activists that has not happened in the past several years.
Human rights activities by human rights activists are stipulated as legal in the international human rights regulations; and it is reaffirmed in the ‘Declaration for Human Rights Activists’ that was adopted in the 1998 UN General Assembly. The Commission wants to remind this fact and therefore expresses its concern about the doubts that might be brought by the recent arrestment of the two activists about the development of democracy as well as human rights protection in Korean society among people in the global community.
Forth, the Commission, whose mission is to promote human rights of the people, will continue to monitor the process and development of Pyeongtaek incident to check if there has been any misdeed that might have violated human rights of human rights activists or the community members.
The Pyeongtaek incident draws special in that the law enforcement arrested the human rights activists whom we, at the Commission, have the responsibility to protect.
