115 Days and Counting - Free Laura and Euna!
by JONATHAN HARRIS, Managing Editor
One-hundred and fifteen days is a long time. Three and a half months ago, we were still arguing about the outrageous AIG bailouts. Thank goodness they’ve learned their lesson since them. Um…right? President Obama had just made a Special Olympics gaffe and was trying to make up for it. Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it? It was that week that American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained in North Korea and have been imprisoned ever since. Yes, 115 days is a long time.
Though Lee and Ling definitely knew the risks of entering into the quarantined nation, their detention and sentence of 12 years of hard labor is cruel, unwarranted and will only further damage North Korea’s reputation around the world.
It would be a great sign of understanding on Pyongyang’s side to grant amnesty to these two women and give us back two of our talented young journalists. There are things you can do:
•Read Mallika Chopra’s article on Intent and Gotham Chopra’s blog post on Causecast to see their perspectives. Their dedication and compassion for Ling and Lee is touching and these brief essays deserve to be read by as many people as possible.
•Sign this petition requesting amnesty for Ling and Lee. The goal is 1,000,000 online signatures and we have a long way to go.
•Visit the site dedicated to freeing Laura Ling and Euna Lee, read about their story, get connected, and write to your elected officials to support this cause.
•Tweet @Causecast with a link to this story (http://ow.ly/gZbt) and the hashtags #eunalee and #lauraling. Also, make sure you have a Causecast profile and post your thoughts on your Causecast blog. Tell us what you think it would mean if they were to be released, for our country and relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
- Posted by Causecast
Related causes: Community, Human Rights
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reminds me of the carter administration
i hope obama doesnt dilly dally around with this the same way
They were working on a piece for the Vanguard series on Current TV which consistently produces some of the highest quality investigative journalism about world issues I know to exist. Laura did the first piece I ever saw on the breakdown of society in Mexico due to the marijuana and arms trade long before it was an issue on the US national stage.
These women have produced so much high caliber work at the risk of so much. They are both married and I believe that they both have children. They exemplify what it means to have courage and integrity in their work and WHEN they return home, hopefully sooner rather than later, I hope that their experiences in captivity in North Korea will only lead to more exposure of that dark regime. What an ironic thing it would be if the capture of two US journalists in some small way led to to the exposure and eventual downfall of the Kim Jong Il regime?
Euna & Laura were arrested while covering human trafficking at the border. i.e. they were doing real journalism about an important issue - a rare commodity these days. We should do what we can to support their release.