Video and Text: OPC President Speech at Ling and Lee Vigil

OPC President Allan Dodds Frank spoke at the New York Candlelight Vigil, one of six events held on June 3, to support detained journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. This article provides the text of his speech.

For 70 years, the Overseas Press Club of America has stood for freedom of the press and its practioneers. Today is no different.

We are here to demand the immediate release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two journalists being held – we believe unlawfully – by the government in North Korea.

A show trial on trumped-up charges that is set to begin today is an act of cowardice by the North Korean government, a government that calls itself a “democratic peoples republic.”

Any trial of Laura Ling and Euna Lee will be a confession of weakness by North Korea’s leaders that the country cannot bear any impartial scrutiny from the outside world.

Ling and Lee were captured March 17, on assignment as accredited journalists for Current Television. They were near the frozen Tumen River trying to document the conditions of trading of women refugees that goes on along that Chinese-North Korean border.

Their capture by the North Korean government and subsequent detention is clearly an effort by the North Korean government to continue to hide what is really going on inside the dictatorship.

The charge that the two illegally entered North Korean with “hostile intent” could not be upheld in any impartial court of law.However, we are not talking about a regime that believes in the rule of law or the rights of people - its own or anyone else’s.

At the Overseas Press Club, our Freedom of the Press Committee led by Larry Martz and Kevin McDermott began in March sending letters to North Korea and to the People’s Republic of China seeking help in a calm, reasoned way to clear up this unjustified detention.

Instead of responding, the North Korean government has become increasingly preoccupied with its missile launching, nuclear weapons testing and possible regime change involving the replacement of Kim Jong Il by one of his sons.

Surely, the detention of two American journalists does nothing to help the cause of the beleaguered, impoverished populace of North Korea.

Today, I called the North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations to try to get an explanation or an answer to why Ling and Lee are still detained. I was told he is unavailable.

While the OPC does not believe there should be any trial, if indeed there is to be on, it should be open to the press so all the world can judge the quality of justice in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

So I ask the leaders of the world to join those of us who are here to demand that North Korea release these two brave and well-meaning journalists at once.

Thank you for caring about them – and the free flow of information around the world. Let us keep the pressure on and hope that the government there will see the wisdom of doing the right thing by letting Laura and Euna go free.