While most of Southeast Asia is experiencing economic growth and Westernization, one place remains a relic of a past political era responsible for the deaths of millions. The long shadow of Stalin manifests within history’s first and only patriarchal monarchy to enact the Communist Manifesto. Concentration camps dot the bleak landscape.

Ambitious highways remain empty of vehicles. Whole families are arrested, and hundreds of thousands toil in work camps as no other form of industry exists. Meanwhile, the entire country slowly starves to death. The world remains either unaware of such crimes against humanity, or is afraid of rousing North Korea’s powerful neighbor to the North, China.

No other country in the world has the same cult of personality as North Korea. Their leader, Kim Jong-il, is revered as nothing less than an omnipresent god. The Korean or ‘Forgotten War,’ of the early 1950s claimed 3 million lives and has never officially ended. The North, backed by the Communist powers of China and the USSR, fought the South, led by the Allied forces of the USA and Great Britain.

This was a ‘proxy’ war of opposing ideologies, a battleground for the world’s new superpowers to posture and display military might. North Korea has the fourth-largest standing army, and is the most militarized country in the world. A tense ceasefire remains to this day, and fire-fights occasionally burst along the 38^th parallel.

In 2009, Kim Jong-il launched missiles over Japan’s North Island, claiming he was testing new technology to launch satellites. North Korea fired upon a disputed island in 2010, sending 1,200 civilians scrambling to seek safety in bomb shelters. These are only recent provocations; there have been over thirty such incidents since the ceasefire of July 1953.

Under the rule of founding leader, Kim il-Sung, the country experienced a period of relative prosperity in the 1960s and 70s. The disintegration of a key ally, the Soviet Union, and agrarian mismanagement in the 1990s killed a million people, causing devastation and famine throughout the country. Accounts by escapees describe resorting to eating grass and boiling roots to survive.

This neglect of agricultural and commercial necessities are eerily similar to policies enacted by Stalin in the Ukraine during their massive Holodomor Genocide of the early 1930s. Collective farming and the arrest and murder of landowners led to the death of 8 million peasants as a result of the Marx-Engels manifesto.

Former leader Kim il-Sung wrote his thesis known as Juche,  a communist policy divergent from the Soviet style that is marked by an isolationist approach to all outside governments and strong North Korean nationalism. This ethos prohibits all contact with the outside world, thus very rarely is the voice of a North Korean heard.

The state-run media has no free press, and citizens are subject to ten-year work camp sentences if they are found to have tuned in to any broadcast outside the one and only state station. The few that escape and make it to the West tell of the most deplorable conditions imaginable.

Shin Dong-hyuk was born in a prison camp, tortured, and forced to watch the execution of his mother and brother after a failed escape attempt. He is now a human-rights activist, fighting for the liberation of his people. Refugees risk their life fleeing over the mountains north into China, and escape to South Korea is impossible.

A 160 mile long, 2.5 mile-wide fortified barrier keeps these two ethnically similar, yet politically opposed, countries apart. The only option is escaping into China, and eventually Mongolia where citizens can find refugee status. Many women become indentured servants or prostitutes.

China does not recognize North Koreans accordingly, and promptly return the captured back to North Korean authorities to face torture, starvation or execution. China’s actions have not gone unrecognized by the UN, which has condemned their policy.

Normally a very private dictatorship, conditions have become so dire that the regime allowed photographs of their children to be seen by the world due to a harsh winter and flooding of 2011. Analysts think this may be a last-ditch effort to garner money from the UN and South Korea, who have stopped their efforts after it was revealed that Kim Jung-il misappropriated such funds.

This October, UN undersecretary-general Valerie Amos claimed that 6 million North Koreans, particularly children, mothers and pregnant women, are at serious risk, and that wealthier countries need to put politics aside to provide aide.  ”This is about helping the people who are most in need.

It’s not about saying that this country has made a choice about spending its resources in one way rather than another. We don’t make those judgments in other countries, on humanitarian grounds. There’s no reason to begin to do it in,” Amos said, according to the AP.

Maxim Tupikov / Shutterstock.com

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After a Malaysian journalist was shot to death while on a mission trip in Mogadishu Friday, the Prime Minister urges the public not to point fingers. “Let’s not play this blame game,” Malaysia Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak (Najib) said Sunday, in a media conference at the Royal Mayasian Air Force base in Subang. “The most important thing for us is to take stock of what has happened.”

The deceased journalist, Noramfaizul Mohd Noor, 39, worked as a cameraman for the Malaysian National News Agency, Bernama. He had a wife and two children. Najib spent time consoling Noramfaizul’s family.  According to Bernama, Noramfaizul “was shot while travelling in a four-wheel-drive vehicle with other Malaysian media personnel covering the humanitarian aid mission to Somalia by the Putera 1Malaysia Club.”

Officials said that a clash between the African Union (AU) troops and other gunmen resulted in Noramfaizul’s death. Another reporter was severely wounded. A security official told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that initial reports indicate that AU peacekeepers were responsible for opening fire on the cameraman’s vehicle. Further investigation of the incident is being conducted.

Adbukarim Ali, a security official with the AU-backed government army, reported to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the shooting occurred at a busy area, which was Kilometer Four, in Mogadishu. “The men were hit by bullets when they were in their car, as they apparently were returning to their hotel,” said Ali.

In an article by Reuters, Muhideen Mohamed, a volunteer with the Malaysians described the deadly scene.“Two bullets hit the journalist, one in the head and another on the shoulder. He died on the spot,” Mohamed said. Mohamed also reported that the second reporter suffered a bullet wound to the arm.

All 54 members of the Putera 1Malaysia Club mission flew back to Subang on board the aircraft carrying the remains of Noramfaizul, reported Bernama. “There’s a limit to what you can prepare for any eventuality,” Najib said. “Isyallah (God willing), we’ll try our level best in the future to prevent such a thing from happening again.” Najib also said, “this deadly shooting is part and parcel of journalism.”

According to the BBC, as the Somalia’s food crisis has intensified. There has been an increase in the number of foreign aid workers and journalists traveling to region to help.

In July, The Washington Post reported that the famine in parts of southern Somalia had already killed tens of thousands of people, mostly children. Humanitarian aid officials described the situation as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the troubled country in two decades.”

On August 30, an article in Bernama said that a group representing the Putera 1Malaysia Club, which included Noramfaizul, had arrived in Mogadishu.Atuk Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim, mission chief and club president, said that their humanitarian work would focus on five areas in Somalia; Magadishu being the first stop.

The mission aimed to distribute 250 tones of food and provide medicine to approximetly 45,000 families.The report by Bernama concluded with the statement that, “Bernama TV reporter Khairulanuar Yahaya and cameraman Noramfaizul Mohd Noor are among the media crew taking part in the mission.”

The BCC said that the crisis in Somalia was “severely aggravated by civil strife.” According to AFP, “Clashes between rival militia groups happen regularly in Mogadishu, a city that has been battered by a bloody insurgency as Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels fight to unseat the Western-backed government.”

Such tumultuous conditions make humanitarian aid missions, like the work of Putera 1Malaysia Club, particularly dangerous. Noramfaizul is not the first individual to be killed while trying to better humanity in Africa.

Media rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) rank Somalia as the deadliest country in Africa for media personnel, with 23 media workers killed since 2007.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfameastafrica/

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United Nations has declared a famine in two areas of southern Somalia as the region suffers the worst drought in more than 50 years. So far an estimated 10 million people have been affected by the drought in Somalia.

Millions of people are at the brink of death and despair due to widespread starvation and malnutrition. More than 166,000 desperate Somalis have fled their country to neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya. Many of those who are fleeing the country are using their very little money to pay for buses but most of them are forced to walk hundreds of miles in search for food, shelter and peace.

The problem became more severe with the fact that Al-shabab, an Al Qaeda affiliated group, imposed a ban on foreign food supplies and other essential commodities for life.

Mark Bowden, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Somalia said that “if we don’t act now, famine will spread to all eight regions of southern Somalia”. He further elaborated on the situation in Somalia that ‘Every day of delay in assistance is literally a matter of life and death’

A famine in any region is declared only when acute malnutrition rate among children exceed 30 percent and 2 people die because of inaccessibility to food and water.

The Al-shabaab group banned a number of international aid agencies from operating and extending the basic assistance provided by them. In 2009 they also restricted UN World Food Programme on the basis of allegation of distorting local economy and of being anti-Muslim.

Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary for African affairs at the state department said: “The issue and the problem is Al Shabaab”. According to UN Refugee agency, every day ten children under the age of five die from chronic hunger and hunger related causes in a refugee camp in Ethiopia.

UNHCR Report further provide details into what has been the major cause of very high mortality rate, the report said that main cause was malnutrition and outbreak of measles in the region.

At the Scene
Mohamed Mwaliu, told the BBC news, “I met a woman, Amina – who came from central Somalia, somehow she was able to get a lift in the lorry but most heartening part of her journey was that she walked 50 KM carrying her one and half year old son on her back, only to realize, when she arrived that he is dead.

Furthermore, Mwaliu says people are in such dire and disgraceful conditions that they are ready to walk miles on order to reach camps set for draught victims.

In another story, Mwaliu said he met a woman called Habiba from a village near Buurhakaba city in south-west Somalia who reached the capital, around 125 miles by foot. Another woman told the BBC that she left her sick child on the road since he was too weak to make up the journey to Kenya.

The Aid and Beyond
Recently 31 ton of UNHCR consignment including plastic sheeting for shelters, blankets and sleeping mats arrived in Mogadishu airport. Despite millions of dollars being spent in aid in Somalia it is yet a distant dream to reduce hardships of the people soon.

It is only because of food shortage, absence of rains, corruption and conflict; people of Somalia are living the worst nightmare anybody can go through.

The extent of human suffering is far beyond human capabilities of tolerance and patience. The hope is for rain in October to wash all maladies of the people of Somalia and let them live a stable and prosperous life.

Image Courtesy of By SSGT CHARLES REGER [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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Most often than not you wonder if the very people in whose hand we have left the management and of our countries and world in general are worth the honor. You wonder if those at the helm of affairs are there to serve the people or to fulfill their selfish interest.

I have harbored a pain in me for such a long time but after seeing the lackluster attitude with which our “caring” leaders are attending to the situation in Somalia, I think it is time to speak.

The end of the human race begins the day we fail to see other humans as people worth helping. What is happening in Somalia is a serious world problem the needs serious attention and quick response but unfortunately the very people in whose hand we have entrusted our world do not see it as such.

The horn of Africa has been hit by severe drought affecting Kenya, Ethiopia and especially Somalia. Somalia has been hardest hit by the drought, which is the worst in 60 years, because it is a poor country, trying to work its way out of war since 1991. This has placed 11.3 million people in need of aid. Currently there are 800,000 children at risk of starvation and the drought is not expected to end before October.

Children some as young as a few months old are made to go days without food and sometimes without water too. The death toll is believed to have reached triple figures though there is yet to be an official release — yet our leaders look on with little concern just because they and their families are full. They fail to see the urgency of the situation.

The most disheartening of all is the fact that there is still fighting in the country between the government army, backed by African Union forces, and the Al-Shabab rebels which on Thursday resulted in the death of 25 people and more than 50 wounded in Mogadishu, the capital. Presently, there are about 1.5 million people internally displaced in the country with over 800,000 already in refugee camps in neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia.

It is a shame that we all, especially those in a position to help, have turned the bling eye. The people of Somalia did not choose to be born there — neither have they called for a famine. This is an issue that can happen to any country especially those of the third world and the earlier we help the better it will be for us all. We should count every soul that perishes in this famine as a shame to the human race because they die as a result of our inability to interpret their need as an emergency.

With this piece, I am sending an appeal to the world in the name of God to help Somalia if you can. Let us be remembered for posterity not through our inaction but as a people who acted wisely when the hands of time called on us to. Somalia is not only their Somalia but our Somalia too.

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