The Hidden Gulag - US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea

The Hidden Gulag Second EditionAbout the Author:David HawkA prominent human rights researcher and advocate, David Hawk is a former Executive Directorof Amnesty International USA, and a former United Nations human rights official. His careerbegan with involvement in voter registration and desegregation campaigns in Mississippi and Georgiain the early-and-mid-1960s. After post-graduate studies, Hawk began directing AIUSA in 1974,overseeing a rapid expansion and extension of influence at a time of surging international interestin human rights. Hawk later served on the Board of Directors of AIUSA and became a foundingmember of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch/Asia.In 1981, while based in Thailand to monitor the situation of Cambodian refugees and famine relief,Hawk kicked-off groundbreaking investigation, documentation and analysis of the Khmer Rougegenocide—a project that he would continue through the decade—traveling regularly to Cambodiaand obtaining and publishing original Khmer Rouge prison documents, prisoner/execution andmass grave photographs, and supplying first-person eye-witness testimony from Cambodians insidethe country and in refugee camps, along with a framework to understand the system of repressionwithin the terms of international human rights law.In August 1995 Hawk traveled to Rwanda to document genocidal massacres for the US Committeefor Refugees, and in 1996 he returned to Kigali on mission for Amnesty International. In the midto-late1990s, he directed the Cambodia Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,helping to train and sustain fledgling Cambodian human rights civil society organizations, monitorcurrent violations, and stand up for accountability. Returning to the USA in 1999, Hawk consultedfor the Washington DC-based Landmine Survivors Network, advocating the landmine ban anddisability rights conventions, and assisting in humanitarian aid for landmine victims in Cambodiaand Vietnam.Since 2002, Hawk has focused on the grievous situation of human rights in North Korea. His publicationson the DPRK include: Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps—Prisoner Testimoniesand Satellite Photographs, The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2003; Thank You FatherKim Il Sung: Eyewitness Accounts of Violations of Freedom of Thought Conscience and Belief in North Korea,U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, 2005; “Human Rights and the Crisis in1