Help to Starving is "Big Fake" and "Lie"
A German doctor who spent 18 months inside North Korea says that U.N. humanitarian assistance to the country is being diverted to support the North Korean dictatorship of Kim Jong Il. He says top U.N. officials continue with the arrangement because they are enjoying the high life in the capital city of Pyongyang, including a casino, a nightclub, and special stores. Dr. Norbert Vollertsen, who is in the United States to reveal how foreign assistance is propping up the Communist North Korean regime, was expelled from the country after going public with his revelations.
He says things have improved in Pyongyang: "There's a nice casino. There's a nightclub. There are diplomatic shops for the elite and the high-ranking politicians and military." But in the countryside, where the children are starving, nothing has changed. He says, "When I came to the DPRK [the Democratic People's Republic of Korea] in 1999, there were pictures of starvation. And when I left DPRK one and one-half years later, it was the same situation. Nothing has changed in the countryside. But in Pyongyang, there are more Mercedes-Benzes than in Washington or Seoul [South Korea]. They are incredibly rich in Pyongyang."
He suspects the food aid is being sold to generate cash in Swiss bank accounts for the Communist elite. What is abundantly clear is that "It's not going to the people." He says humanitarian agencies are not allowed to feed people directly and "There is no real monitoring" of how the aid is distributed. "You can see the results," he says. "I went to the hospitals [in the countryside] with my patients and there was no food or medicine or nothing. There was nothing to see that was coming from WFP [the U.N.'s World Food Program]." He calls the food program for North Korea a "big fake" and "a lie."
The U.N.'s World Food Program claims it monitors the distribution of food. Yet Dr. Vollertsen says he was also the doctor for those humanitarian aid workers, the nurses, technicians, and others working for the U.N who were supposed to be doing the monitoring. He says they were "depressed, fed-up, sometimes suffering from nervous breakdowns because they realized they can't do real monitoring. They were not allowed to see where the food aid was going." He adds, "Some of them -- and I can prove that -- actually wanted to commit suicide because of this situation -- because they had to make the reports that everything was okay." Dr. Vollertsen says the high-ranking U.N. officials in Pyongyang go along with the facade because they are pulling down big salaries, enjoying the high life in the capital, and attending lavish state dinners in honor of the North Korean dictator.
In the face of this first-hand eyewitness testimony, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival, urged U.N. boss Kofi Annan to withdraw all U.N. personnel from North Korea and punish those who have exploited foreign aid for personal financial gain.
| America's Survival, Inc. Cliff Kincaid, President. 301-855-2679 FAX 301-855-3732 |
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