Excerpts from recent editorial in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
Seattle Times on how D.C. needs to do more to free Kenneth Bae:
American prisoner Kenneth Bae wants the U.S. government to help get him out of North Korea. The former Lynnwood resident issued his plea recently in a news conference, the first time authorities there have let him speak to reporters.
The United States has tried and should keep trying. The State Department’s special envoy for human-rights issues, Ambassador Robert King, was invited to Pyongyang last August to negotiate for Bae’s freedom. The regime rescinded its offer at the last minute.
Under heavy guard and wearing a gray uniform with the number 103 on his chest, Bae apologized for his crimes. He also revealed he might soon be returned to prison after months of treatment in a hospital for various ailments.
The 45-year-old tour operator’s nightmare began in November 2012 while he was escorting five Europeans into North Korea. Bae was detained, then sentenced to 15 years in a labor camp for “hostile acts” against the government.
Speaking on CNN Wednesday morning, Bae’s mother and sister from Washington state expressed fears that anything they say about this latest prison video may be misconstrued by the North Koreans.
They echoed Bae’s apology and said they are worried about his health. His wife and three kids need him home.
For months, U.S. officials maintain they’ve worked with the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang and requested amnesty for Bae on humanitarian grounds. An offer to send an envoy still stands.
The U.S. government should also consider what’s worked in the past, too. On separate occasions, former presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton traveled to North Korea to bring home American prisoners.
Last month, Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old Korean War veteran and tourist, was released after he confessed (under duress) to crimes committed during his time serving in the U.S. military.
The North Koreans could show the same mercy to Kenneth Bae, but they may need a stronger nudge from Washington, D.C. Jan. 26
The Telegraph, London, on coming full circle in Egypt:
Three years ago this week, vast crowds gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to bring about the end of the regime of Hosni Mubarak. That they were able to do this owed much to the support of the Egyptian military, which kept its authoritarian instincts in check after presiding over a state of emergency that had lasted for 30 years.
It is extraordinary, therefore, that many of the demonstrators gathered in the same square yesterday to celebrate the third anniversary of the “revolution” want a military hard man as their next leader. Gen Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s defense minister, who last summer helped engineer the removal of Mohamed Morsi, the elected Muslim Brotherhood president, is now favorite for the post himself. He is hailed as the heir to Gamal Abdel Nasser, a comparison he is anxious to promote, even if al-Sisi lacks the charisma of Nasser, both in Egypt and in the wider Arab world; nor, mercifully, does he espouse the anti-Israeli rhetoric that led his predecessor into disastrous conflicts.
The country has, then, come full circle these past three years: from military regime to short-lived democracy and back again. The Muslim Brotherhood, which emerged from decades of undercover activism as a banned organization to win the election, is proscribed once more and its leaders under arrest. Those high hopes voiced by many young, Western-inclined people in Tahrir Square in January 2011 have been dashed and were always fanciful.
True, 98 per cent of Egyptians (on a 38 percent turn out) voted in favor of a new constitution earlier this month, but this offered just the veneer of popular choice since dissenters were arrested. Several journalists remain in prison under vague charges of “falsifying information”. It is repression as usual.
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