ETV Bharat / international
Second Trump-Kim summit to take place in Vietnam
Hanoi: Vietnam will be hosting the second summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un later this month.
File photo
By
Published : Feb 6, 2019, 9:56 AM IST
Trump made the announcement on Tuesday during his annual State of the Union address.
The summit will be held in the capital Hanoi or the seaside city of Danang on February 27 and 28.
Washington's goal for the talks is for North Korea to agree give up its nuclear weapons.
Also Read: Looking forward to meet Kim: Trump
North Korea frames the issue more broadly, seeking a removal of the "nuclear threat" from US military forces in South Korea.
Host Vietnam hopes to boost its diplomatic leverage against its powerful neighbour, China, which contests waters in the South China Sea claimed by Hanoi.
As a single-party communist state, Vietnam boasts tight political control and a tough security apparatus.
The Southeast Asian nation is seen as friendly turf for Kim. Vietnam and North Korea share a history of anti-imperialist struggle, uneasy relations with common neighbour China and a one-party police state political system.
Also Read: Watch: Snow and ice blast western US cities
The flying time between North Korea and Vietnam is shorter, compared to the roughly six hour flight to Singapore, where the first Trump-Kim summit was held in June last year.
A spokesperson for the Vietnam foreign ministry recently said that Vietnam is very confident in its ability to host international events, after it successfully hosted the 2017 APEC summit in Danang.
Trump was among the leaders who attended that summit.
He also travelled to the capital Hanoi for a state visit.
Trump made the announcement on Tuesday during his annual State of the Union address.
The summit will be held in the capital Hanoi or the seaside city of Danang on February 27 and 28.
Washington's goal for the talks is for North Korea to agree give up its nuclear weapons.
Also Read: Looking forward to meet Kim: Trump
North Korea frames the issue more broadly, seeking a removal of the "nuclear threat" from US military forces in South Korea.
Host Vietnam hopes to boost its diplomatic leverage against its powerful neighbour, China, which contests waters in the South China Sea claimed by Hanoi.
As a single-party communist state, Vietnam boasts tight political control and a tough security apparatus.
The Southeast Asian nation is seen as friendly turf for Kim. Vietnam and North Korea share a history of anti-imperialist struggle, uneasy relations with common neighbour China and a one-party police state political system.
Also Read: Watch: Snow and ice blast western US cities
The flying time between North Korea and Vietnam is shorter, compared to the roughly six hour flight to Singapore, where the first Trump-Kim summit was held in June last year.
A spokesperson for the Vietnam foreign ministry recently said that Vietnam is very confident in its ability to host international events, after it successfully hosted the 2017 APEC summit in Danang.
Trump was among the leaders who attended that summit.
He also travelled to the capital Hanoi for a state visit.
RESTRICTION SUMMARY: NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
SHOTLIST:
++ Associated Press is adhering to Iranian law that stipulates all media are banned from providing BBC Persian, VOA Persian, Manoto 1 or Iran International any coverage from Iran, and under this law if any media violate this ban the Iranian authorities can immediately shut down that organization in Tehran.++
ASSOCIATED PRESS - NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
Tehran - 7 January 2019
++16:9++
1. Tilt-up from water pool to wax mannequins at former prison depicting a SAVAK (a Farsi acronym for the Organisation of National Intelligence and Security of the Nation, formed in 1957) interrogator forcing head of a prisoner under water
2. Man walking past the mannequins
3. Tilt-up of wax mannequin of inmate being hung from his wrists from metal grating
4. Mannequin seen through a prison's open door
5. Pan of prison's circular courtyard
6. Various of former prisoner Ahmad Sheikhi's hand opening bolt locks of metal prison door, Sheikhi walking through door
7. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Ahmad Sheikhi, 63, former prisoner in Shah's era:
"The prisoner would be blindfolded, laid down on their back and tied up to the flogging bed that you see here. Electrical cables of different sizes were used for whipping. The torturer pushed a pillow against your face to keep you from screaming because screaming helps you tolerate the pain a little. The pillow would also work as a silencer to help the torturer not to get nervous. If I wanted to let my torturers know that I wanted to talk, I had to shake my thumb so that they stopped beating me and listened to me. I was tied up to this bed twice. I was tortured by a device called 'the Apollo' that you see here too. Apollo was name of a chair that resembled the astronauts' chairs on Apollo 11 spacecraft that went to the moon. They put my hand and foot fingers between the jaws of vises firmly, whipped the soles of my feet with cables and put a metal bucket over my head so that I could not scream. Because screaming makes torture somehow tolerable and if I did scream, my own cries would twirl around inside the bucket and got me delirious and gave me headaches. They would hit the bucket with those cables as well."
8. Sheikhi looking at the torture device called Apollo chair with wax mannequin of his torturer next to him
ASSOCIATED PRESS - NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
ARCHIVE: Tehran - 10 February 1979
++4:3++
9. Various of crowd outside Evin prison, zoom to guerrillas on top of wall, men inside prison cells, prisoners being freed
ASSOCIATED PRESS - NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
ARCHIVE: Iran (exact location unknown) - 27 June 1979
++BLACK AND WHITE ARCHIVE FOOTAGE++
++4:3++
10. Various of an Islamic court giving judgement on former SAVAK secret police
ASSOCIATED PRESS - NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
ARCHIVE: Iran (exact location unknown) - 1979 (exact dates unknown)
++BLACK AND WHITE ARCHIVE FOOTAGE++
++4:3++
11. Pan from members of public to SAVAK torture instruments on display
12. Various of graves of executed counter-revolutionaries
ASSOCIATED PRESS - NO ACCESS BBC PERSIAN / NO ACCESS VOA PERSIAN / NO ACCESS MANOTO TV / NO ACCESS IRAN INTERNATIONAL
Tehran - 7 January 2019
++16:9++
13. Pan of torturer mannequin's hand holding a cigarette to prisoner trapped in a metal cage
14. Tilt-down of wax sculptures of torturer and prisoner in metal cage
15. Tilt-up of wax mannequins of a torturer and prisoner being hung upside-down from ceiling
16. Close-up of framed photos of Iran's toppled Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife Farah Diba, exiled shahbanu or empress of Iran
17. Torturer's mannequin next to prisoner with his hands handcuffed crossed behind him
18. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Ameneh Khavari, 20, artist:
"I had heard that there had been a jail where prisoners were tortured but I did not know that the torture might have been this agonising, such as with the metal cage torture device. I found out about it today. I had known that there was torture then from movies about the pre-revolution times, but would not have imagined that it looked like this."
19. Khavari and her friend touring the museum
20. Reverse shot of touring students looking at the video on torture museum being projected on a wall
21. Students looking at video with was mannequin of torturer in foreground
22. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Amir Hossein Karimi, 14, pupil from a high school in south of Tehran:
"(The revolutionaries) had reason to protest. The people were aware of places like this and knew that their fellow citizens were being tortured here. They knew that many of them could end up in a place like this themselves if the situation continued. That is the reason they revolted."
23. Black-and-white mug shots of former prisoners on wall
24. Close-up of mug shots of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader (screen-left) and late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Iranian President (screen-right) who were kept in SAVAK prison before the Islamic Revolution
25. Photographs of prisoners
26. Visiting cleric looking at photographs on walls
27. Photographs on walls and wax mannequins of torturers seen through a room's open door
28. SOUNDBITE (Farsi) Ahmad Sheikhi, 63, former prisoner in Shah's era:
"We are far from where we must be as far as the justice is concerned. Justice has yet to be spread in the society and we are definitely very far from the sacred goals of the martyrs and their imam (Khomeini). However, the fight is not over yet. The fight between right and wrong started when human beings were created and will continue until the end of time. So I am still a revolutionary and I am not going to be at ease because we cannot say that everything is where it must be. There is still a lot to be done. I do not regret what I have done. I am hopeful about the future."
29. Wax mannequin of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, late former president
30. Tracking shot to the cell where Rafsanjani was kept and his wax mannequin seated in the cells
31. Wax sculpture of Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, in the same cell he was kept before the Revolution
32. Close-up of fan spinning in the dark on wall
33. Pan from dark hallway to cells
34. Close-up of metal door with wax mannequin seen through grating
35. Dark room with wax mannequins of inmates on sides and prison warden in the middle
STORYLINE:
The halls of this former prison in the heart of Iran's capital now are hushed, befitting the sounds of the museum that it has become, but the wax mannequins within it silently portray the horrific acts of torture that once were carried out within its walls.
Exhibits within the former Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee Prison run under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi include a frightened man trapped in a small metal cage as a cigarette-smoking interrogator shouts above him.
In its circular courtyard, another snarling interrogator forces a prisoner's head under water while another inmate on the floor above hangs from his wrists.
As Iran this month approaches the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the shah, those who suffered torture at the hands of the country's police and dreaded SAVAK intelligence service still bear both visible and hidden scars.
Even today, United Nations investigators and rights group say Iran tortures and arbitrarily detains prisoners.
"We are far from where we must be as far as the justice is concerned", said Ahmad Sheikhi, a 63-year-old former revolutionary once tortured at the prison.
"Justice has yet to be spread in the society and we are definitely very far from the sacred goals of the martyrs and their imam", he said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The SAVAK, a Farsi acronym for the Organisation of National Intelligence and Security of the Nation, was formed in 1957.
The agency, created with the help of the CIA and Israel's Mossad, initially targeted Communists and leftists in the wake of the 1953 CIA-backed coup that overthrew elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh.
Over time, however, its scope drastically widened.
Torture became widespread, as shown in the mannequin exhibits in the museum.
Interrogators all wear ties, a nod to their Western ties.
Portraits of the shah, Queen Farah and his son Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who now lives in exile in the US, hang above one torture scene.
Sheikhi walked with The Associated Press through the prison that once held him, built in the 1930s by German engineers.
Black-and-white photographs of its 8,500 former prisoners from over the years line the walls.
They include current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini and the late President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Sheikhi, then 19, spent some three months in this prison and 11 months in another after being detained for distributing anti-shah statements from Khomeini, then in exile.
Among the more frightening was the torture device interrogators and prisoners referred to as the Apollo, named after the US space programme that went to the moon.
Those tortured sat in a chair and had a metal bucket strapped over their head that intensified their screams.
"They put my fingers and toes between the jaws of the vises firmly, whipped the soles of my feet with cables and put a metal bucket over head", Sheikhi said.
"My own cries would twirl around inside the bucket and made me delirious and gave me headaches. They would hit the bucket with those cables as well."
The horror of the torture shocked 20-year-old museumgoer Ameneh Khavari.
"I did not know that the torture might have been this agonizing, such as with the metal cage torture device", she said.
"I had known that there was torture then from movies about the pre-revolution times, but would not have imagined that they looked like this."
As the revolution took hold, protesters overran the prison.
Then Iran's Islamic government began using it as a prison as well, calling it Tohid. Human Rights Watch has accused Iran of using both Tohid and Evin prisons of detaining political prisoners.
Tohid, then run by Iran's Intelligence Ministry, closed in 2000 under reformist President Mohammad Khatami after lawmakers sought close prisons not under the control of the judiciary.
Today, Iran's government faces widespread international criticism from the UN and others over its detention of activists and those with Western ties.
Iran has criticised the UN's creation of the special rapporteur's position and calling its findings "psychological and propagandist pressures".
In the time since the revolution, several former prisons from the shah's time have closed, becoming museums and shopping malls.
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