The Struggle of Censorship in Asian Countries

If I am completely honest, I will say that I was not that surprised to read about the recent poisoning of Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam. In “Communist Asia,” murder is not outrageously shocking; rather, it is an infrequently employed last resort when it comes to dealing with opposition or inconvenient family members who voice an occasional comment or two about government policies and legitimacy.

By now, the international community is well acquainted with the notion of an isolated, repressive North Korea, where bloodthirsty Kim Jong Un has his people detain, punish, torture, rape and execute “destructive insurgents” without anyone speaking up. In fact, if government-issued accounts are to be trusted, North Koreans love their leader, worshipping the ground he treads on and the photographs that his law enforcers hang in all public spaces. In order to achieve this degree of personality cult, Kim Jong Un has had to employ various means to exterminate hundreds of power contenders, including senior party elites, military officials and relatives like his uncle Jang Song Thaek. Sometimes, his party covers up these murders; on other occasions however, they are carried out in very public spaces with multiple machine guns and government officials announcing fabricated charges that range from treason to pornography and theft or even just being related within three generations to persons guilty of such charges.

It is surprising to me that Kim Jong Nam made it this far, given the fact that as Jong Un’s brother, he is directly in the line of succession. Perhaps a letter sent by him and his family while in exile temporarily moved Jong Un to spare his life for a few years. “We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. We are well aware that the only way to escape is suicide.” They had pleaded in vain when the North Korean leader issued a “standing order” for assassination. Not much is known about Jong Nam; he received a Western education, spent much of his time in Macau and Beijing, and fell out of favor with his father for “becoming a capitalist.” He was quoted in an interview with Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi as saying, “The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long. Without reforms, North Korea will collapse.” No wonder the younger brother started harboring some hard feelings. On Feb. 13, Jong Nam was splashed with poison at Kuala Lumpur airport while waiting to board a flight to Macau. He was strong enough to seek medical health, yet passed away shortly afterwards in an ambulance. Four hitmen have been arrested by the Malaysian police, of Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malaysian and North Korean nationality, respectively.

Purging, inhumane as it is, remains an employed tactic not just in North Korea but other communist regimes in Asia as well, albeit with significantly less intensity. The government of Vietnam, for example, uses a mixture of purging, torture, forced labor and detainment to deal with individuals brave enough to challenge any of its policies. According to Amnesty International, there are at least eighty-four prisoners of conscience in Vietnam detained for blogging, publishing or peacefully marching for their beliefs. Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, an engineer and entrepreneur, recently became one of the most prominent detainees, with British Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis and American ambassador Michael W. Michalak both crying out against his sixteen year sentence for “propagandizing against the government.” Now jailed in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Thuc frequently goes on strike to protest against his detainment.

If prominent relatives, party members and political activists are treated by the ones with supreme power in this way, it is no surprise that ordinary citizens are accorded with nearly no respect. In Vietnam, election day is a big joke. For one thing, all candidates are of the same party and promote the exact same agenda. Their promise? “We pledge allegiance to the great everlasting Communist party and the teachings of Ho Chi Minh (the Vietnamese Lenin).” None of the adults I know actually vote. Internet websites predict voting outcomes with a 100 percent accuracy, from the presidential seat to the provincial deputies.

Coming from such a background, I cannot help but marvel at how my friends here take their rights and freedoms for granted. “American hypocrisy,” they say, with a smirk. True democracy, human rights, freedom of expression—what are those but high-flown words written for the naive, for the innocent believers, for the puppets brainwashed with the illusion of an American Dream? Time and time again have I heard the cynical opinion that America should brush aside its unrealistic “propaganda” of exceptionalism; many use the recent election of a populist president to prove that this country has given up on its founding values. But to a person used to living in an oppressive state, the difference between political tolerance here and back home cannot be more pronounced.  Here, at least access to unbiased information is guaranteed.

I still remember the inexpressible joy that first day in September, when I clicked onto BBC and Human Rights Watch articles without reading the lines “Error 451—The websites you are trying to access contain delinquent and immoral content.” The simple fact that I am writing this article for a publication is one that I do not take for granted. This is an article that I would not dare to write six months ago. This is an article that I would not dare to write in my native language. This is an article that even now, despite living half the globe away from prosecution on student visa, I still feel butterflies in my stomach as I hit the send button.

But I am practising self-expression in the face of fear. Because if the next generation of Asians do not stand up to defend their rights for themselves, who will?