A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, June 17, 2017
South Korea: Human Rights Violated CIA officer for May 18 Foundation
Statement on Donald Gregg’s Participation in the 5.18 International Conference in New York
( June 15, 2016. Seoul, Sri Lanka Guardian) As
reported in the Hankyoreh article entitled, “The spirit of Gwangju
Democratization Movement comes to UN headquarters in New York,” on May
26, 2017, former CIA Seoul station chief and US ambassador to Korea
Donald Gregg was the honored guest of the May 18 Memorial Foundation at a
conference in New York at the United Nations.
Fifteen years earlier, on May 18, 2002, a Gwangju Citizens’ Tribunal
involving hundreds of people found Gregg and seven other US officials
(including former President Jimmy Carter) guilty of “crimes against
humanity” for their role in the suppression of the 1980 uprising. Gregg
has repeatedly asserted, contrary to mountains of evidence, that he has
no reason to apologize to Gwangju citizens and that the US did not know
what was happening there in 1980. The May 18 Memorial Foundation’s
decision to invite Donald Gregg is therefore quite regrettable.
Gregg participated in the May 22, 1980 White House meeting that came to
“general agreement that the first priority was the restoration of order
in Gwangju by the Korean authorities” (quoted from US government
documents by then-US Ambassador William Gleysteen)—a clear signal to
Chun Doo-hwan for him to suppress the uprising. Nine days before May 18,
1980, in a meeting in the very same safe house where Park Chung-hee had
been assassinated, Gleysteen had instructed Chun the US would not
oppose the use of the army against demonstrators, another indication of
US knowledge and intent.
So great was public disapproval of Gregg when he was U.S. ambassador to
South Korea from 1989 to 1993, he never made a publicized address at any
Korean university because of expected protests (according to his own
admission). In an article in 2005, he described the results of a 2003
South Korean poll as “shocking” because of the anti-American feelings
expressed by so many people.
For the May 18 Memorial Foundation simply to ignore this history and
invite Donald Gregg as an honored guest ignores years of Gwangju
citizens’ heartfelt grievances—and their righteous condemnation of
Donald Gregg and other American officials as the hand behinds behind
Chun.
Recent attacks on 518 include false claims that the uprising involved
North Korea. It is important to set the record straight, but in doing
so, it at least as significant to clarify decades of US government and
CIA lies about US involvement. Rather than doing so, the May 18
Foundation routinely uses CIA sources of information to “prove” no North
Korean involvement, thereby implicitly endorsing the CIA as a reliable
source of information and disrespecting the spirit of Gwangju.
Only If Gregg would apologize sincerely and truthfully reveal his and
the US role in encouraging Chun to use force against Gwangju citizens
should such an invitation have been made.