Monthly Archives: January 2015

RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Volunteers raise awareness about human trafficking

Volunteer Marjorie Saylor, 32, puts up a poster about human trafficking at Del Lago Market in Lake Elsinore as part of a countywide "Day of Action" against human trafficking on Jan. 17, 2015.

FRANK BELLINO, FRANK BELLINO, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

If you or someone you know is being forced to engage in any activity and can't leave whether it's commercial sex, housework, farmwork, construction, factory, retail or restaurant work, or some other activity there are numbers to call for help.

National Human Trafficking Resource Center: 1-888-373-7888

California Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking: 1-888-539-2373

Volunteers fanned out across Riverside County Saturday to spread awareness about human trafficking and help businesses comply with a law to help victims.

Though the law has not yet been enforced in Riverside County, since April 2013 California has required certain types of businesses to post notices informing the public and potential victims of human trafficking and slavery about telephone hotlines where they can seek help or report suspicious activity.

I dont think a lot of people are even aware of it, sheriffs Lt. Paul Bennett, who oversees the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, said of the law.

The businesses affected include massage parlors, farm labor contractors, transit stations, sexually oriented businesses, liquor stores, emergency rooms and privately operated job recruitment centers.

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RIVERSIDE COUNTY: Volunteers raise awareness about human trafficking

AP Photo/Jason DeCrow North Korean human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk delivers remarks during an event on human rights in North Korea on Sept. 23 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

TOKYO Shin Dong-hyuk, the North Korean prison camp survivor who has become the symbol of human rights injustices suffered in that country, has changed key parts of the story of his ordeal.

Although the most horrific details, such as being lowered by a hook over a fire, still stand, Shin has admitted that many of the places and timings in his telling of his story were wrong, according to Blaine Harden, the author of Escape from Camp 14, the best-selling book about Shins life.

From a human rights perspective, he was still brutally tortured, but he moved things around, said Harden, a former Washington Post journalist who first wrote Shins story for The Post in 2008.

Shin, 32, has been one of the most prominent defectors from North Korea, trying to raise awareness about human rights abuses there. He also testified in front of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, whose report has led to an international campaign to hold the totalitarian states leaders to account for decades of human rights violations.

North Korea, alarmed by this campaign and the prospect of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un being indicted, has been trying to undermine Shins testimony and will doubtless seize on these revisions to try to portray all accounts of human rights abuses as fabrications.

In Escape from Camp 14 and in his testimony to the U.N. commission, Shin has told this story: That he was born in Camp 14, a sprawling high-security political prison in the mountains of north of Pyongyang, where he was brutally tortured and lived until his escape in 2005. He has consistently said that he escaped with a fellow inmate, climbing over his body when the man was electrocuted on the fence that surrounded the camp, and then made his way into China.

Shin has now admitted to Harden that when he was about 6, he, his mother and his brother were transferred to another prison camp, Camp 18, across the Taedong River from Camp 14.

It was there, after learning of his mother and brothers plans to escape, he betrayed them to the authorities, Shin told Harden. It was also in this camp, he said, that he witnessed their execution.

In the book, Shin recounted all these events as happening in Camp 14.

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North Korean defector admits inaccuracies in his story

An obese woman has filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, claiming she was discriminated against because of her weight, and denied a reasonable level of care.

The complainant, a university professor, says a doctor told her that, because of her obesity, there was no point wasting rehabilitation resources on her, and another doctor told her she was just wasting a rehab bed.

In a decision issued Friday, tribunal member Catherine McCreary denied the application to dismiss the complaint, noting certain conclusions could only be reached after a hearing.

The individual doctors involved, the health authority and the complainant are all subject to a publication ban and cannot be identified.

The professor says she suffers from a disability, namely obesity, and the tribunal notes that obesity is a disability which is a protected characteristic in the B.C. Human Rights Code.

The woman said she received differential and discriminatory treatment in her access to rehab, following two hip surgeries, followed by an infection, and the subsequent removal of her prosthetic hip.

The complainant, who was in excess of 440 lbs., said a doctor told her she would be transferred out of rehab and into a seniors home, and that the health authority did not have the resources to deal with someone her size.

The health authority disputes the womans assertion that she was denied a reasonable level of rehab. They noted that both of the complainants hospital stays markedly exceeded the typical length of stay by several weeks, and her 126 days in the rehab unit was the longest length of stay of any orthopaedic patient in the Unit over a six-year period.

The health authority also said the complainant refused to participate in nutrition counselling.

The tribunal member urged the parties to use mediation to settle the matter.

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Obese woman files complaint with B.C. Human Rights Tribunal over her post-surgery care