If you can't leave a country, then – as a fair rule of thumb – it's a dictatorship. Cubans died trying to escape from Castro's tyranny, in makeshift rafts across the sea to Florida. Not, of course, that that presents any problems to the Labour leadership and their Castro fetish.
And then there's Kim Jong-un's Democratic People's Republic:
North Korean border guards have been ordered to shoot any North Korean citizens attempting to flee the country. According to sources in North Hamgyong Province, two citizens were killed earlier this month while trying to escape across the border to China in Namyang City, North Hamgyong Province.
“In the middle of November, two citizens who were trying to cross the Tumen River into China were shot and killed by border guards who intercepted them. The soldiers didn’t even ask them why they were at the river or order them to turn around. They simply shot them on the spot,” a source in North Hamgyong Province reported to Daily NK on November 25.
“In the past, it was standard procedure to give three warnings before shooting, but this time it wasn’t the case. Instead of reprimanding the soldiers for the incident, the commanding officer rewarded them.”
When asked about the sudden change in policy, an additional source in North Hamgyong Province said, “An order was handed down at the beginning of the month stating that defectors should be shot on the spot without exception. This is being viewed as an attempt to clamp down on defections.”
According to Daily NK’s sources, the incident – involving a soldier shooting a resident without warning – is seen as unprecedented. Since Kim Jong Un rose to power, there has been a continuous stream of shootings, but all have been preceded by warnings to stop moving.
Are Jeremy Corbyn and Dermot Hudson, our very own Songun defender, really all that far apart?
Update: Martin Bright at the Spectator – "We now have to recognise that a major political party in Britain is being led by a teenage romantic revolutionary who just happens to be in his sixties."
Mick Hartley 
Leave a comment