When
our public officials fall asleep while attending a meeting, or an official
function, the standard Nigerian reaction is to have a hearty laugh at their
expense. Harmless laughter. You’d remember many photographs of our lawmakers
turning the National Assembly into an extension of their bedrooms, sometimes
snoring loudly in the middle of a heated and loud debate: not that many of them
would be of much use anyway even if they were awake. Governors,
commissioners, high ranking government officials have also all been caught at
one time or the other, sleeping on duty. Well, those whose circadian
switches go off like that should count themselves really lucky they are Nigerians.
If they were to try that in North Korea, they will face the firing squad!
Yes, in North Korea, such careless sleeping attracts the death penalty.
In that country of 25 million people, there is a despot in power. He is Kim
Jong-un. At 32, he is the world’s youngest leader but probably the most
dangerous man in the world. He rules his country like a concentration
camp and continues to commit some of the world’s most frightening crimes
against humanity. Human lives mean nothing to him. He is so desperately
paranoid, the slightest act of irritation in his presence could make him
commit murder. His word is law. He is supreme commander, judge and executioner.
I was literally shivering when I read the latest horror story from
Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. Two high-ranking officials were ordered executed by
the dictator. Ri Yong Jin, a senior official at the Ministry of
Education, was accused of putting up an “inappropriate posture” while “The
Marshal” was delivering a speech. Ri Yong Jin’s crime was that he dozed
off. Former Agriculture Minister, Hwang Min’s crime was that he dared to
disagree with Kim’s guidelines for designing a working policy on
agriculture. He developed his own ideas. He used his own initiative. He
was accused of trying to undermine the leader. Both Jin and Min were
marched to the stakes within 24 hours and executed with anti-aircraft
guns. Kim Jong-un is not satisfied with an ordinary gun; his victims have
to face anti-aircraft guns, and you can imagine the impact of such a special
purpose gun, targeted at a human being.
Since assuming office in 2011, Kim Jong-un has murdered more
than 70 persons, including elite government officials who all lived in
fear. His own uncle, Jang Song-taek, was one of the earliest victims at
the beginning of his dictatorship. Others include a military officer who was
executed for drinking during the official mourning period for Kim Jong II, Kim
Jong-un’s father, and the proximate genetic source of his megalomania. In
2015, the architect who designed a new airport terminal in Pyongyang was
executed because Marshal Kim did not like his design! And Ri Yong Jin won’t be
the first man to die for succumbing to the call of nature. In April, former
Defence Minister Hyong Yong-Choi also faced the firing squad for falling asleep
during an event. The North Korean Human Rights situation is a threat to
the whole of mankind. The use of execution, extra-judicial killing, torture and
forced labour as tools of political control is one of the worst abuses of power
ever known.
The United States has imposed sanctions on Kim Jong-un. The United Nations has
also officially condemned his atrocities, but Kim Jong-un is dangerous, again
because of the nuclear power and missiles at his disposal. Starkly
egoistic as he is, he could throw the world into utter chaos, were he to press
a nuclear button. The United Nations Security Council has an obligation to take
the situation in North Korea more seriously. Kim Jong-un’s matter should
be an urgent matter of concern for the International Criminal Court (ICC).
I mean, to kill a man for falling asleep? Polysomnographers insist that there
is nothing any one can do about sleep. Even when you don’t suffer from
somnipathy, when it is time for the body clock to switch off, it does so on its
own. The best option is to give in to nature so the body can rejuvenate.
Many public officials and business executives run crazy schedules. They
over-stretch themselves, either travelling over long distances and rushing from
one meeting to another, without any opportunity to take a few moments of rest -
jet-lagged, tired or exhausted, they could doze off. This is why at many
meetings, there is always a coffee pot on standby or sweets or as I have seen,
kolanuts and just about anything that you can put in your mouth to enable you
focus on the event at hand. But even these offer limited help. Balancing
work with rest is often a challenge for busy people. The whole world knows
this, except Kim Jong-un who is so insecure he cannot stand other people’s
humanity.
I think of all the government officials in Nigeria who sleep
during meetings. If they were to be in North Korea, they would all be dead by
now. I recall incidents involving soldiers on parade, even soldiers of the
Guards’ Brigade, suddenly slumping, drawing sympathy, and one particular
incident involving a former Minister of State for Defence, who suddenly slumped
while standing at attention at a military event. Try that in North Korea:
immediate execution by a firing squad would be the result. And if I were North
Korean myself, and I had served as official spokesperson to Kim Jong-un, I
would have been executed by a firing squad long before 2015.
I used to doze off too at meetings. My boss ran a tough schedule
and he had more stamina than his staff. We could return from a foreign trip by
2 am, and we would all be expected to be at work by 8 am. If you know how these
things work, it could take another two hours to properly disengage and go home,
leaving you with only two hours of sleep. In our case, the principal
would have been up and about by 6 am (only God knows how he always did it) to
attend morning devotion and spend some time in the gym, all before 8 am.
We the principal aides would struggle to arrive, still sleepy but struggling to
appear capable. Sometimes, the source of the grogginess may not be
jet-lag but just work (and God, we worked!).
From one meeting to the other or a function after another, in the course of the
day, I used to doze off occasionally. Note taking often kept me awake, but
there were moments when I simply lost control. You know that kind of thing:
you’d suddenly realize it and jerkily regain consciousness. On such
occasions, I often caught the President glancing at me. But one day, I guess I
overdid it. In the middle of a meeting, I must have snored – that kind of
snoring that produces noisy decibels and note-changing, level-revising,
rhythmic modulations. It was the President’s voice that shook me out of the
slumber.
“Abati,
what is that?”
I opened my eyes.
“Next
time you are feeling sleepy, just go out, walk around for a few minutes and
come back. But don’t snore when we are having a meeting.”
In North Korea, that would have earned me an appearance not before an
anti-aircraft gun, may be an armoured tank! Kim Jong-un is crazy. The problem
is not form; it is the psychology of power. The civilized world must stand up
for the right of every human being to be human and not have to die because of a
leader’s ego. There is a nightmare going on in North Korea and that is
probably better explained by the number of North Koreans who are fleeing to the
neighbouring countries of Japan, China and South Korea.
North Korea - the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK!) - is a
hermit state where even the right to information or free speech is impossible.
People are not allowed to communicate with the outside world, there are
restrictions on movement and rights of association, there are no labour rights,
the state is so repressive, there is even a strict national policy on men’s
haircut: not more than 2cm hair growth is allowed. Why? You can’t grow your
hair higher than that of the self-styled “great person born of heaven!” What
exists in that country is not leadership, but a cult of personality, and the
only personality is the leader whose legitimation derives not from the people
but dynastic inheritance. North Korea is a living demonstration of the dangers
of power acquired not on the grounds of intellectual brilliance or competence
or the people’s choice, but heredity.
Regime-change is a popular phrase in closed-door international circles, what is
needed in North Korea is not just regime change, but a people’s revolution that
takes power away from class dynasty and hands it over to the people. The world
has enough dangerous men already, tolerating a schizophrenic in the Korean
Peninsula who has access to nuclear power makes the world a bit more dangerous
than it is already.
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