(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on June 17)

Deaths in Yemen

We have no words to properly condemn the murderers of nine foreigners kidnapped
in Yemen, including three children and a Korean woman.

Our sadness is all the
more, as the killings took place only three months after four Korean tourists
were slain in Sibam, also in Yemen, in a suicide bombing which was believed to
have been perpetrated by the same terrorist group as the abductions last week.
The victims are a German couple and their three children, two other Germans, a
Briton and the 34-year-old Korean Eom Yeong-seon. The six men and women were
volunteers at a hospital in Sadaa in northwestern Yemen near the border with
Saudi Arabia, an area known to have strong presence of al-Qaida terrorists. The
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Eom belonged to the Worldwide Service,
a Dutch-based international aid organization, which assigned her to Sadaa last
August to take care of the children of doctors working at the hospital.
The foreigners were there to help the people of the poorest country in the Middle
East. Their humanitarian activities were repaid by their savage deaths at the
hands of terrorists. The aid workers treated Yemeni people with medical supplies
provided by their respective headquarters and lived on provisions from the
outside. They only breathed the Yemeni air - they placed no burden on the local
people.
On Friday last week, they went on a picnic in a van because it was a holiday, but
they did not return. Yemeni security forces found their bodies abandoned at
scattered locations. The children and women had been executed. They did not
deserve to become victims of such an atrocity just because they were foreigners
with a different faith.
On his Middle East tour earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama appealed
for understanding and tolerance between different faiths. He exhorted all people
of the world to "reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the
killing of innocent men, women and children." Terrorists answered the historic
address of the U.S. president in the cruelest fashion.
The violent extremists cannot, however, stop people with lofty ideals from
choosing to face danger and help suffering people in diverse parts of the world.
They will include many Koreans who go to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America
and other remote places with philanthropic and religious ambitions. While the
international community should lend support to their humanitarian services,
nations should bolster their cooperation in the war on terror to put an end to
the savagery of religious and ethnic fanatism.
(END)