A national candlelight vigil will be held today (June 3) for jailed journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two women were on assignment from Al Gore’s Current TV media project in China, and were arrested by North Korean police near the border.
Rallies will be held nationwide tonight for two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea. In addition to New York, rallies will be held in Washington D.C., Birmingham, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Portland, and Los Angeles. The New York rally will be in Washington Square Park from 6 to 8 p.m.
The journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were arrested on the North Korean border in early March of this year. They were on assignment from Contact TV reporting on refugees fleeing North Korea into China.
A local journalism organization, the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC), is an organizer of the New York event. They have been calling for Ling’s and Lee’s release since their arrest. The OPC says North Korean officials insist the women crossed the frozen border river from China, but according to the journalists they were apprehended in China after refusing to stop filming.
“Whatever the truth of that dispute, the women were certainly legitimate journalists doing their work,” said Larry Martz, Freedom of the Press Committee Co-Chair for the OPC in a letter to North Korean officials in May. “The charge that they entered illegally with “hostile” intent does not bear scrutiny.”
June 3 (June 4 in North Korea) is the first day of the journalists’ trial. They are being charged with spying and illegally crossing the China-North Korea border. They could spend up to 10 years in a North Korean boot camp if convicted.
In a letter from the families of the two women, they plead for the women’s release.
“We have been holding our breath every day as we’ve watched the political situation on the Korean Peninsula grow increasingly tense,” says the letter. “Our loved ones sit in the midst of it.”