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prisoners have already been released. As it is now officially admitted by the Prosecutor-General that Category C prisoners awaiting release still remain, it is clear that the official total figures very much underestimate the real numbers in prison.
Despite an official announcement last year that "certificates of non- involvement" in the 1965 attempted coup are no longer required, most released prisoners face difficulties in getting official and private employment because they do not possess the certificates, and consequently find it hard to make a living.
Al groups now work for a total of 218 cases. There have been releases, for the first time this year, of AI adopted prisoners from 1965. In January 1975, a long- standing AI adoptee, Sitor Situmorang, the distinguished writer, was released from prison and placed under house arrest. He was one of about 10 former PNI prisoners, all classified as Category B, released in January.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea
In April 1975, President Kim Il-sung said during a visit to Peking that North Korea would not stand by "with arms folded" if revolution came to the Republic of Korea (i.e., South Korea). The cold-war climate which pervades North-South Korean relations has been a particularly serious obstacle to Amnesty Interna- tional work.
In North Korea, there has been an almost total suppression of information about the "re-education" of political prisoners. Two exceptions to this were the cases of foreigners imprisoned in North Korea-and adopted by AI groups. The Venezuelan poet Ali Lameda was released in September 1974 after 7 years' imprisonment. He had been sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment in 1967 on political charges. His release is thought to have been the result of high-level, diplomatic initiatives by the Venezuelan government. Another adopted case was that of the French writer and translator Jacques Sedillot, now reported to be released and living in North Korea.
Republic of Korea
The 1972 Constitution gave the President the power to suspend basic rights and freedoms "in case the national security or the public safety and order is seriously threatened or is anticipated to be threatened" (article 53). During the past year, President Park Chung-hee has employed this power in the name of national security against the presumed threat from the North, so that the position of basic human rights has seriously deteriorated.
In his report on his mission for Amnesty International to South Korea in July-August 1974, American lawyer William Butler concluded that "no evidence was found from any source indicating a present external and internal threat of communist takeover sufficient to justify such a total denial of human freedom". Furthermore, "even if such a threat did exist, the use of torture by any govern- ment must be condemned as inhuman and barbarous and not acceptable to any civilized nation”.
President Park invoked article 53 to introduce two emergency decrees, Num -