A US activist has won the Seoul Peace Prize for her campaigns to improve the human rights of North Koreans and of Sahrawi refugees from Western Sahara, the award’s committee announced yesterday.
Suzanne Scholte, president of the Defense Forum Foundation, was selected as the ninth winner of the biennial prize worth US$200,000.
“At a time when countries are purposely neglecting human rights conditions in North Korea for their political interests, Ms Scholte has taken the lead in raising awareness of the miserable plight of North Korean refugees,” the committee said.
The committee said her efforts led in 1999 to the first US Senate hearing on the North’s camps for political prisoners. She had also helped arrange numerous other Congressional hearings and briefings.
Scholte hosted the first appearance in the US of survivors of the camps. She testified on rights conditions in the communist state and the sufferings of North Korean refugees hiding in China before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
In 2003 she hosted the appearance of Hwang Jang-yop, North Korea’s highest-ranking defector, on Capitol Hill.
She had also petitioned the UN General Assembly to address the plight of Sahrawi refugees and called for a referendum on self-determination in Western Sahara.
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