The UN Security Council should sue North Korea in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for ongoing crimes against humanity, the UN’s top investigator said. [icopyright one button toolbar]
He urged firm action against the regime’s long list of human rights violations against almost all the country’s 24 million people, including arbitrary detention, torture, executions and prisons camps.
“This would send an unequivocal signal that the international community is determined to take the follow up to the work the commission of inquiry on the DPRK (North Korea) to a new level,” Maruzuki Darusman, the inquiry’s rapporteur, said.
His call has strong support among UN diplomats but legal action in the ICC may stumble because of a likely Chinese veto in the Security Council. Despite Beijing’s distaste for the antics of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, including his nuclear bluster, it will not tolerate his humiliation at ICC hands. Arresting Kim is also beyond the capacities of UN officials.
Allowing intervention by the Security Council that might undermine the Pyongyang regime would hand a diplomatic triumph to Washington, which Beijing will avoid at any cost.
Even if the Security Council’s five veto powers fail to reach consensus, Darusman’s investigation carries weight because it puts the spotlight on the North Korean regime’s reckless behavior and the people’s immense and relentless suffering.
To its great credit, Washington is a leading force in keeping up this pressure despite political and diplomatic obstacles. Pyongyang and Beijing may remain unmoved but US pressure on UN diplomats forces the leaders of many other repressive countries to tread much more carefully.
The ICC is controversial and some critics accuse it of having a poor record as an arbiter and enforcer of legal redress and justice for the millions being crushed by human rights violations. But this is a struggle in which moving one small step forward without sliding two steps back is already a victory for all those fighting around the world in favor of human rights.
Darusman insisted on “a more fundamental acknowledgement of the scale of the problems” and efforts to “ensure the accountability of those responsible”. His investigation completed earlier this year said the North Korean regime’s behavior met the threshold required for crimes against humanity in international law.
He remained unmoved after his first ever meeting with Pyongyang officials in the corridors of the UN General Assembly in New York today. North Korea’s numerous and systematic human rights abuses include violations of the freedoms of thought, expression and religion; discrimination on the basis of social class, gender and disability; violations of the freedom of movement and residence; violations of the right to food; and enforced disappearances, including through international abductions and enforced disappearances.
“The North Korean authorities should allow all persons who have been abducted or otherwise forcibly disappeared, as well as their descendants, to return immediately to their countries of origin, and speed up the investigation into the fate of those missing in a transparent and verifiable manner,” he said.
Japanese and North Korean officials started two days of talks today to assess progress in Pyongyang’s investigation into the fates of Japanese citizens who were abducted in the 1970s and ’80s. Simply getting agreement to hold talks was a breakthrough for Japan, which is also lifting some trade sanctions although it still does not have formal diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.
In a separate 2014 report, Human rights Watch said the regime represses all forms of freedom despite having ratified four key international human rights treaties and technically possesses a constitution with some rights protections
“Those who attempt to assert rights, fail to demonstrate sufficient reverence for the party and its leadership, or otherwise act in ways deemed contrary to state interests face arbitrary arrest, detention, lack of due process, and torture and ill-treatment,” it reports.
“The government also practices collective punishment for supposed anti-state offenses, effectively enslaving hundreds of thousands of citizens, including children, in prison camps and other detention facilities with deplorable conditions and forced labor.”
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