Prisoner tells of long ordeal in North Korea

Press, 12 July 1979, Page 16

Prisoner tells of long ordeal in North Korea

By

PATRICK FERGUSON

in London

A rare account of life in a North Korean prison camp by a man who spent six vears in solitary confinement as a political prisoner was published early this month. Ali Lameda, a Venezuelan Communist who worked in the North Korean foreign propaganda department translating the works of Kim Il Sung into Spanish, describes conditions of hunger, sickness and ill-treatment in a camp of 6000 people, mostly jailed for political offences — some as trivial as refusing to give up smoking. Lameda was arrested m 1967 on undisclosed charges and detained for 12 months in an internal security prison. He was then put under house arrest, but days later he was re-arrested and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment with forced labour. In his account of his experiences, published by Amnesty International. Lameda says his arrest came as a complete surprise, though he had earlier expressed private doubts about the value of the “exaggerated claims” that were being made by the North Koreans in their propaganda. At the trial, he says, he was ordered to confess his guilt: "The accused has to accuse himself before the tribunal. Thus there was no necessity for the tribunal to produce any evidence.” Takeir to the Suriwon

prison camp, he was pushed into a “filthy hole” — a temporary cell, where he remained handcuffed for three weeks before being moved to the main camp. As a foreigner he was not allowed to mix with the other prisoners and saw only guards and orderlies. Lameda learnt from the orderlies that the camp held some 6000 people, of whom about 1200 were sick. The prisoners worked 12 hours a day on mechanical jobs, such as assembling Jeep-style trucks. Outside the camp others worked on prison farms.

He estimates that there might be as many as 20 of these prison camps in North Korea and suggests that if each was as big as the one at Suriwon their total population would amount to 150,000, including political and criminal prisoners. The case of the smoking offence involved a w.oman who arrived at the camp with 200 others, some of whom had been imprisoned for theft. Official policy forbids women to smoke, says Lameda. and this woman was denounced by a colleague at work.

The local party cell had "sent her down to production” — work in the iron or mining industry — but when she returned two years later, still uncured of her vice, she was sent to the prison camp. Lameda’s case was taken

up by Amnesty International and the Venezuelan Government and he was released in 1974. Since then, Amnesty reports, other attempts to collect information on arrests, trials and imprisonment in North Korea have been fruitless. 0.F.N.5., Copyright.