Japanese Reactionaries Urged to Set Free Chongryon Officials

   Pyongyang, May 16 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies in a statement on Saturday vehemently denounced the arrest of officials of the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan (Chongryon) on May 12 by the Japanese reactionaries as an unpardonable politically-motivated provocation against the DPRK and a serious human rights abuse.
    The statement said that the shameless and reckless action of the Japanese reactionaries was little short of the unprecedented atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese imperialists during their colonial rule in the past when they forcibly drafted and abducted millions of guiltless Koreans for slave labor, hurled them as cannon fodder and forced women into sexual slavery.
    It went on:
    The Japanese reactionaries took such repressive action against officials of Chongryon in daylight one year since an agreement was reached at the talks between the governments of the DPRK and Japan held in Stockholm in May last year on settling the inglorious past and solving the pending issues. This was a revelation of their dastardly and wicked intention to use Chongryon as a lever for pressurizing the DPRK.
    We will never overlook the hideous crimes committed by the Japanese imperialists against the Korean nation in the past century and the serious human rights abuses and national discrimination by the Japanese reactionaries against Chongryon but surely force Japan to pay for them very dearly.
    The Japanese authorities should properly understand who their rival is and stop going reckless, apologize for their wanton infringement upon the dignity and human rights of Chongryon officials and release them at once. -0-