Geneva (AFP) - Ahn
Myong-Chol witnessed many horrors as a North Korean prison camp guard,
but few haunt him like the image of guard dogs attacking school children
and tearing them to pieces.
Ahn, who worked
as a prison camp guard for eight years until he fled the country in
1994, recalls the day he saw three dogs get away from their handler and
attack children coming back from the camp school.
"There were three dogs and they killed five children," the 45-year-old told AFP through a translator.
"They
killed three of the children right away. The two other children were
barely breathing and the guards buried them alive," he said, speaking on
the sidelines of a Geneva conference for human rights activists.
The
next day, instead of putting down the murderous dogs, the guards pet
them and fed them special food "as some kind of award," he added with
disgust.
"People in the camps
are not treated as human beings... They are like flies that can be
crushed," said Ahn, his sad eyes framed by steel-rimmed glasses.
The
former guard is one of many defectors who provided harrowing testimony
to a UN-mandated enquiry that last week issued a searing, 400-page
indictment of gross human rights abuses in North Korea.
After fleeing the country
two decades ago, Ahn worked for years at a bank in South Korea but
gradually got involved in work denouncing the expansive prison camp
system in the isolated nation.
Three years ago, he quit his bank job to dedicate all his time to his non-governmental organisation, Free NK Gulag.
"It's my life's mission to spread awareness about what is happening in the camps," he said.There are an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 political prisoners in North Korea, a nation of 24 million people.
Ahn, who today is married with two daughters, knows all too well the brutal mentality of the camp guards.
When he, as the son of a high-ranking official, was ushered onto the prestigious path of becoming a guard in 1987, he says he was heavily brainwashed to see all prisoners as "evil".
At his first posting at camp 14, north of Pyongyang, he was encouraged to practice his Tae Kwon Do skills on prisoners.
And he recalls how guards were urged to shoot any prisoner who might try to escape.
"We
were allowed to kill them, and if we brought back their body, they
would award us by letting us go study at college," he said.
Some guards would send prisoners outside the camp and kill them as escapees to gain access to a college education, he added.
Ahn said he had beaten many prisoners but said that, to his knowledge, he had never killed any of them.
Although he witnessed
numerous executions, starving children, and the effects of extreme
torture, it was not until he was promoted to be a driver, transporting
soldiers back and forth between camps, that he began to question the
system.
During his travels he
sometimes struck up conversations with prisoners and was astonished to
find that "more than 90 percent" of them said they had no idea why they
were in the camp.
Ahn had stumbled across North Korea's system of
throwing generations of the same family into prison camps under
guilt-by-association rules.He got a taste of that rule himself. On leave in 1994, he returned home to find that his father had committed suicide after making some drunken, negative remarks about the country's leadership.
Ahn's mother, sister and brother were detained and likely sent into camps, although he is not sure what became of them.
Though
Ahn returned to work, he feared he too would be dragged off. So he
drove his truck to the shores of the Du Man River and swam across to
China, having to dump the heavy weapons he was carrying to avoid
drowning.
Once he got involved in the NGO work in South Korea, he
was uneasy about meeting former prisoners who had also managed to
defect, like Chol Hwan Kang.
Kang
was sent to Camp 15 -- where Ahn once served -- with his whole family
when he was nine and spent 10 years there to repent for the suspected
disloyalties of his grandfather. Ahn remembered him from his time as a
guard there.
But Kang, like most survivors, understood he had not chosen his job and had accepted his plea for forgiveness.
"He met me with a gentle handshake," Ahn said.
Last
week's UN report was vital to spreading awareness about the reality of
the camps, Ahn said, comparing what is happening there to the Soviet-era
Gulags.
"The difference is that in North Korea we are still talking in the present tense. These horrors are still happening," he said.
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