Iain Clayton (l) and Michael Saldate, husbands of imprisoned journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, respectively, at a vigil in San Francisco honoring the women who are imprisoned in North Korea.
I took a departure from my usual writing about smartphones, Bluetooth headsets and other gadgets to cover an event that is important to me personally and professionally: Journalists imprisoned for being journalists.
Thursday marks the 100th day since Laura Ling and Euna Lee, journalists for San Francisco-based Current TV, were captured in March by North Korean authorities and accused of entering the country illegally and “carrying out hostile acts” against the authoritarian Communist regime in that country.
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Wednesday night, about 300 people gathered at Morgan Auditorium in San Francisco for a vigil honoring the two women and calling on diplomats in the U.S. and other countries, and human rights organizations, to continue to lobby for their release.
Morgan is part of the San Francisco Academy of Arts University, from which Lee graduated in 2001. The school invites supporters to sign an online petition calling for the women's release and has a video of Wednesday night's vigil.
Lee and Ling were in China working on a documentary about humanitarian efforts to help the impoverished people of North Korea when they, according to news reports, were arrested inside North Korea. They were convicted in early June of crimes related to their trespassing and videotapes of footage they had shot for their documentary were confiscated. The women were each sentenced to 12 years in prison at hard labor, which heightened the concerns of friends and family expressed Wednesday night at the two-hour vigil.
“We ask the North Korean government to show compassion and to release the women as a humanitarian gesture,” said Iain Clayton, husband of Ling, in remarks he made as a large image of her and colleague Lee was projected behind him. He thanked the North Korean government for allowing him, and Lee’s husband, Michael Saldate, to allow them to talk to their wives by phone last weekend.
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Soloist Camille Hudson (above) sang a musical tribute. Various local public officials made remarks in support of the women’s release. L.A. Chung of the Asian-American Association of Journalists, noted the imprisonment of many other journalists, including Roxana Sabieri, an Iranian-American journalist for media such as National Public Radio, who was jailed in Iran for 100 days earlier this year. More recently, Iran has jailed dozens of journalists trying to cover the civil unrest in that country in the wake of the disputed presidential election results of June 12.
Journalists are trying to be fair and impartial and report the truth, as best they can determine it, but they are at risk in regimes where leaders don't want the truth known.
A representative of Amnesty International, Banafsheh Akhlaghi, implored North Korea to release the women and asked the U.S. and other countries, as well as human rights organizations worldwide, “to work together in a concerted effort to bring these women home.”
News today is that the Swedish ambassador to North Korea met with the women, a hopeful sign. The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with North Korea.
But it was the comments of those at the vigil who knew the women personally that were the most effective. Cheryl Marsh, a childhood friend of Ling’s, told of their common affection for the boy band “New Kids on the Block” in the 1980s but then choked up as she related a dream she’d had the night before of reuniting with Ling and hugging her tightly.
“I didn’t want to let go,” Marsh said. “But our dreams of hugging Laura again will become a reality.”
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