By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
South Korea has been backpedaling on human rights regarding expression of opinion, assembly and association under the Lee Myung-bak administration, Amnesty International said Tuesday.
The world's largest human rights watchdog urged the government to remove all measures restricting such rights to maintain Seoul's leadership in human rights protection in the Asia-Pacific region.
``Some policies and measures restricting human rights have commonly been found in prior administrations. However, our concern over, in particular, the right of expression, assembly and association under the current government is higher than ever before,'' said Go Eun-tae, chairman of Amnesty International's Seoul bureau, at a press conference. ``We reached this conclusion after reviewing our past human rights reports.''
It expressed grave concern over the increasing use of force by police in cracking down on demonstrators.
``In recent rallies, police recklessly assaulted and detained non-violent demonstrators and even innocent civilians. Some were injured. But police have not taken any responsibility for that,'' said Kim Hee-jin, director of the human rights group. ``It seems that police have lost their sense of responsibility.''
Kim denounced the police's recent decision to prohibit civic groups with records of hosting unauthorized rallies from taking any collective action. ``It's an arbitrary decision and apparently infringes upon people's freedom of expression, protected under the Constitution,'' Kim said.
She said South Korea's freedom of the press was also in jeopardy as the government has tried to muzzle media outlets critical of the administration by replacing their chief executives with supporters of President Lee.
Earlier this year, chief executives and presidents of the Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), Arirang TV, and Yonhap Television Network (YTN) were replaced by President Lee's supporters.
In replacing YTN's top job, 12 trade union journalists and six YTN journalists were sued or fired for their protests against the appointment of Ku Bon-hong as YTN president.
It added that freedom of expression in cyberspace was also under attack.
``The arrest of blogger Minerva proves it,'' Kim said. ``Even though he was acquitted at trial, we are concerning about similar cases in the future.''
Internet blogger Park Dae-sung, better known as Minerva, was indicted on charges of causing financial loss to the government by spreading unconfirmed information online.