Saturday Showdown at Camp Humphrey’s
You might not want to head over to Camp Humphreys on Saturday:
South Korean civic groups are banding together to press the U.S. military to deny a request from a U.S. Air Force lieutenant charged in an alleged shakedown of bars outside Osan Air Base to resign and avoid court-martial, a civic leader said Monday.
The groups will use a “big demonstration†planned for Saturday outside Camp Humphreys to highlight their concerns over the case of 1st Lt. Jason D. Davis and say they’ll mount larger rallies later if the Air Force allows Davis to resign, said Kim Yong-han, president of the Task Force To Oppose The Expansion of U.S. Bases in Pyeongtaek.
You may remember that 1LT Davis was in charge of the Osan town patrol and was allegedly shaking down bar owners for money and sex and along with other strange behavior. He also has a Korean weapons charge violation hanging against him too that the protesters hope to cash in on:
Activists also have written to the South Korean Ministry of Justice asking that if the Air Force allows Davis to resign that South Korean authorities bar him from leaving the country so they can prosecute him on weapons charges they previously have said they’re considering.
I find it interesting that these “civic groups” act like they are the ones that determine who gets charged with what crimes. It does seem that way after the driver of the fatal traffic accident in Dongducheon this past June was charged by the Korean police after the activists demanded it and USFK is actually thinking about turning the kid over. It would be a shame if they do.
However, as much as 1LT Davis deserves to be turned over to the Koreans, USFK shouldn’t turn him over either because then the activists would demand that every soldier on duty be turned over to the South Korean courts. It would be a bad precedence to set. He should be turned over for any crimes he did commit off duty which I fully expect USFK to do. As far as 1LT Davis’s attempt to resign his commission, I just don’t see that happening. He will stand trial and be punished for whatever he did.
Here is some more info on Saturday’s protest:
Saturday’s demonstration is set for 3 p.m. in Daechu-ri, a tract of farmland just outside Camp Humphreys, which is in the Anjung-ri section of Pyeongtaek City.
The rally originally was scheduled to protest a plan between the United States and South Korea under which U.S. forces in Seoul and points north would move south, mainly to Camp Humphreys. The plan would see Camp Humphreys triple in size by 2008.
Notice that the protesters are returning to the adjacent farm land around Camp Humphreys to protest because the business owners in Anjung-ri do not want the protesters in their town. I would expect that the protesters will resort to violence like they did during the July 10th protest. So unless you absolutely have to go to Camp Humphrey’s Saturday it would be in your best interest to avoid the place all together.
If anybody does go, however, and gets some images and wants to write up a review of it……..email me…..
It's probably a good thing I'm not in Korea anymore, because I would probably be there………….
I put up a good number of videos on the http://www.usinkorea.org site, and most of them these days I'm finding at the anti-US/USFK sites are about Pyongtaek. This is going to be the battle ground from now as far into the future as I can see at the moment.
And somewhat like GI Korea said, what I'm wating to see next is when the pro-USFK businesses and veterans decide they have watched enough and mobilize their members.
That and the actual process of moving off the land the citizens the civic groups convince to fight tooth and nail.
It is going to be ugly.
The July protest was pretty ugly and I just worked on some videos from in May I hadn't heard about until I ran across them this week. That was about as ugly.
I've been trying to find articles about the protests in the Korean language press, but I've failed, which is odd, because I did find a couple of clips on it at MBC's site. They were very short reports.
The ones on Maehyangri closing and the great environmental damage done to the soil and water there were more frequent and longer….
But if MBC is running it, why is the Korea Times in Korean silent????
Anyway, I disagree a little on the MP guy. It seems to me it is a case where USFK can say that the guy's abuse of his position was outside the scope of his duties, even though he was shaking them down based on his position and duty, and they can thus hand him over. It would send a message to others who are doing something similar or thinking about it that if they cross the line, they aren't going to get the same kind of protection other soldiers doing their duty but caught in an accident get.
The Koreans in 2002 kept pointing to a case in Japan where a soldier was on duty and did a crime (I think a rape and murder) and was handed over to the Japanese court.
It was wrongheaded, because the rape and murder was clearly an act outside the scope of the guy's job whether it was his actual working hours or not. Just because you are on the clock doesn't mean everything you do is related to duty.
Shaking down bars, to me, pushes this MP onto the "non-duty" or "off duty" list, and I'd hand him over.
I don't know why USFK decided to wait on the truck accident guy. Maybe there is some key information that hasn't been released yet, but delaying a decision was stupid. If they hold jurisdiction, it is just going to make the reaction worse….
To GI's readers:
You may wonder why Lt. Gen Charles Campbell of USFK would break down and cry on the program Sixty Minutes in the face of a simple question about abusive anti-Americanism perpetrated by a non-white culture … such as Korea: thus, rendering USFK's leadership feckless in the face of political abuse and shake-downs from Koreans masquerading as Civil Rights Activists.
You wonder why General Leon LaPorte unsuccessfully attempts to infect the Koreans with a Jewish Mother's guilt trip .. by attending each year the graves of the two-squashed angels… and allegedly has portraits of the angels in his office.
Few Americans realize the depth to which behavioral psychologists have driven their 'thought control' deculturalization program, via 'sensitivity training,' into the heart of the nation's military establishment.
These techniques have been perfected and utilized in the 'affirmative action' programs that have been implemented in the U.S. Navy and other services since the early 1970s. Since the early 1990s, and especially since females were allowed into combat aviation in 1993-94, this indoctrination has skyrocketed.
All military personnel, from the most senior officer to the lowest recruit, are subjected to this indoctrination through formal seminars and small-group encounter sessions where 'sensitivity trainers' invoke their magic… making blubbering Generals appear out of the top-hat of a proud military institution.
I want General Douglas McArthur back … the sensitive generals got to go! We have an ARMY to run … not a social welfare program.
Am I just a lonely voice speaking in the wilderness?
GI,
It’s a matter of national pride for a Korean NEVER to be outdone in a good-old fashioned corrupt shake-down: thus, these spiteful Korean demonstrations.
I also agree with your dismay over USFK’s procrastination in making a firm judicious response in protecting our men. It’s good to see you haven’t ruled-out the possibility USFK’s generals may be indoctrinated Multi-Cult Manchurian Candidates: brain-washed to see these these civic-groups as Korean embodiments of the Reverand Jesse Jackson, and thus, programmed to instinctively appease any non-white faction of thugs in Civil-Rights clothing.
Your capacity for discernment seems to be growing.
We must entertain the paranoid fantasy that your USFK Generals have “white-guilt” computer-chip implants inserted in their brains by Human Resource Diversity Directors from the Pentagon — thus, rendering them sleeper agents of treason against their own organization.
You should demand competant and loyal leadership… not Manchurian Candidates programmed to weep and blubber at the triggering code-word phrase: “What do you think about Korean anti-Americanism?”
Don’t you think?