On the eve of the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore, Pope Francis led
a crowd of 20,000 in St. Peter’s Square in prayer for a successful outcome of
the talks. Many other people throughout the world also undoubtedly prayed for
that result.
But whether all those prayers will be answered is something we
may not know for months, possibly years. That is no less true of prayers that
included the intention of bettering the horrendous situation of human rights and
religious liberty in North Korea.
Shortly before the meeting of President Trump and Chairman Kim
Jong Un, the Washington-based Religious Freedom Institute sent the White House
a letter signed by foreign policy specialists, human rights activists and religious
leaders urging Trump to raise those issues with Kim.
“For decades, North Korea has been in effect a national torture
chamber. There is nowhere on earth more dangerous for dissenters of conscience,
especially those who believe in God,” said the letter. Among the signers were
Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, former chairman of the U.S. bishops’
committee on religious liberty, Professors Robert George of Princeton and Steve
Schneck of the Catholic University of America, and Miguel Diaz, former American
ambassador to the Holy See.
In a post-summit news conference the president said he had done
as requested and raised the rights question with Kim. But there was no mention
of these matters in the brief, general joint statement bearing the two leaders’
names that was released after the meeting. The statement spoke instead of
promises of “security guarantees” made by Trump to Kim and “complete
denuclearization” made by Kim to Trump.
As always, of course, the devil is in the details. The statement
said the details here would be worked out in “follow-on negotiations” by
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a North Korean counterpart.
Let us hope — and pray — that the agenda of those talks includes
an important place for human rights and religious freedom.
That the situation in North Korea is terrible almost beyond
imagining seems tragically clear. A 2014 report by a United Nations commission
of inquiry gave a thumbnail picture of abuses that included “extermination,
murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other
sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender
grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of
persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
Some 80,000-120,000 persons are said to be held in four major
North Korean political prisons, among them Catholics and other church members
whose so-called crime was to have engaged in religious practice. That number
does not include those in ordinary prisons.
In the best of circumstances the release and peaceful
reintegration of the unhappy souls in the prison camps into North Korean
society seems to me improbable. Perhaps that is why the Religious Freedom
Institute letter included among its recommendations not only the release of the
prisoners but the setting of quotas for voluntary emigration by them and their
families, to be administered by the UN high commissioner for refugees.
The long-range hope for North Korea is that it becomes a place
where the right to practice one’s religion freely will be recognized and
respected. We are a long way from that happening.
The Singapore summit was — perhaps — a first step. Many more
steps remain to be taken. On the eve of the summit Pope Francis spoke of “a
positive path that assures a future of peace for the Korean peninsula and the
whole world.” Keep on praying.
Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington and author of American Church: The
Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America.