Experts: UN Report Reveals Scope of Human Rights Violations in North Korea
The international community must act on evidence that crimes against humanity are being committed in Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), said the experts of UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on human rights in the DPRK in their report, which in great detail documents the €unspeakable atrocities€ committed in the country by the authorities.
€The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,€ says the document.
The report documents crimes such as murder, rape, torture, forced abortions persecution on political and gender grounds, and other human rights violations.
According to the published information, between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are currently held in four North Korean prison camps, where deliberate starvation is used as a means of control and punishment.
The Commission found that the DPRK displays many attributes of a totalitarian State.
€There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association,€ the report says.
€The key to the political system is the vast political and security apparatus that strategically uses surveillance, coercion, fear and punishment to preclude the expression of any dissent. Public executions and enforced disappearance to political prison camps serve as the ultimate means to terrorize the population into submission,€ the document states.
Navi Pillay, United Nations Head Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that this historic report leaves no justification for inaction of the international community.
€[The Commission of Inquiry] has published a historic report, which sheds light on violations of a terrifying scale, the gravity and nature of which - in the report's own words - do not have any parallel in the contemporary world. There can no longer be any excuses for inaction,€ quotes her the official website of the United Nations.
According to Roseann Rife, East Asia Research Director at Amnesty International, the gravity and nature of human rights violations in DPRK are off the scale.
€The UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council should seize this opportunity and use their power and influence to ensure the North Korean government acts on the Commission's findings. The people of North Korea deserve no less,€ she noted.
Roseanne Rife also called for the international community not to stand idle after receiving the evidence of €these incomprehensible crimes.€
€The Commission's findings reinforce the need for the UN Security Council to raise human rights alongside security and peace when it comes to North Korea,€ she added.
However, Hazel Smith, Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies UCLan, takes a different point of view. In her article €Crimes Against Humanity?€ published in €Critical Asian Studies€ journal, she says that much of the analysis does not follow the guidelines of scientific research.
In her opinion, the authors of the document mostly used information that fit their assumptions. For example, she notes almost complete absence of reference of data collected by other UN agencies, donor governments and nongovernmental organizations, particularly in the issues of food and medicine distribution.
€North Korea's nutritional statistics are [€¦] similar to many other countries with low levels of economic development. What these statistics reveal is not a government that is starving its children, but an economic and food crisis of long duration,€ Hazel Smith specified.
€Governments have the right to implement sanctions against other countries, but the way the debate is framed on North Korea is noticeable for the absence of discussion of the perennial dilemma as to whether sanctions damage the government or the long-suffering populations,€ she emphasized.
Hazel Smith also noted the tendency of most news agencies to demonstrate and distribute information on DPRK using a scheme similar to one used to inform the public about the Nicaraguan Revolution and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
€Common knowledge about Korea is not conveyed in a vacuum but organized and disseminated in order to persuade politicians to go to war,€ she stated.
In turn, John Swenson-Wright, Chatham House senior consulting fellow on Asia Programme, said that UN report on North Korea was €not unexpected.€
€The report exposes and demonstrates that the North Korean human rights record is appalling. It is an opportunity for the international community, for the first time, to document in real detail the extents and the long-standing pattern of human rights abuse [in DPRK]. We know from the testimony of defectors that many people are held in what are effectively concentration camps and punished without any means of appeal, and often the physical conditions of those people concentrated in camps is such that many people die in captivity,€ the expert said in an interview with news agency €PenzaNews.€
He suggested that there will be €very little if any steps€ taken by North Korea in response to this report, but placed emphasis on the symbolic and rhetorical significance of the conducted investigation.
Also, the analyst pointed out the critical role of China in this conflict and said that the situation will depend on whether it approves the recommendations of the UN report to move to the International Criminal Court (ICC). In his opinion, this will not happen, because China is not going to sanction such measures.
€I think the human rights abuse is the case that should be in the spotlight of international attention on the DPRK, making clear that international community is solely opposed to this, and raising public awareness. More than that, it requires a much more ambitious agenda trying to find mechanisms to bring DPRK back into the international community and deal with a nuclear issue,€ he said.
David Hawk, the leading expert on human rights in North Korea, described the UN Commission of Inquiry report on human rights violations in the DPRK as €the most authoritative and definitive account of these severe violations.€
According to him, in March the UN human rights council in should adopt a resolution recognizing and condemning the crimes against humanity that North Korea commits against its people, after which the issue should be submitted to the UN Security Council (UNSC) to be referred to the International Criminal Court.
In his opinion, the further actions will depend on the fact if China and Russia will veto a referral to the ICC, and if the US will put China in the situation where it may have to use its veto power.
€If the DPRK wants to join the 21st century and have normalized relations with, and trade, aid and investment from the outside world, it will have to change its human rights policies. If they want to keep their current combination of Korean feudalism and 1930/1940 Stalinism, then there is very little the outside world can do,€ emphasized the expert.
Meanwhile, Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch Asia division, stated that the report will make it impossible for any state to say that they do not know what is happening in the DPRK.
€The UN report is a scathing indictment of the human rights crimes of the North Korea government, revealing that the abuses are systematic and pervasive, and done as a matter of state policy. This is a huge blow to Kim Jong-Un and the North Korean government, who now stand accused of crimes against humanity - and now it is up to the UN and the international community to find a way to hold North Korean leaders accountable for their actions against their own people. North Korea has been revealed as among the worst of the worst of the world's human rights abusing governments, and governments like China or
€The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,€ says the document.
The report documents crimes such as murder, rape, torture, forced abortions persecution on political and gender grounds, and other human rights violations.
According to the published information, between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are currently held in four North Korean prison camps, where deliberate starvation is used as a means of control and punishment.
The Commission found that the DPRK displays many attributes of a totalitarian State.
€There is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as of the rights to freedom of opinion, expression, information and association,€ the report says.
€The key to the political system is the vast political and security apparatus that strategically uses surveillance, coercion, fear and punishment to preclude the expression of any dissent. Public executions and enforced disappearance to political prison camps serve as the ultimate means to terrorize the population into submission,€ the document states.
Navi Pillay, United Nations Head Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that this historic report leaves no justification for inaction of the international community.
€[The Commission of Inquiry] has published a historic report, which sheds light on violations of a terrifying scale, the gravity and nature of which - in the report's own words - do not have any parallel in the contemporary world. There can no longer be any excuses for inaction,€ quotes her the official website of the United Nations.
According to Roseann Rife, East Asia Research Director at Amnesty International, the gravity and nature of human rights violations in DPRK are off the scale.
€The UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council should seize this opportunity and use their power and influence to ensure the North Korean government acts on the Commission's findings. The people of North Korea deserve no less,€ she noted.
Roseanne Rife also called for the international community not to stand idle after receiving the evidence of €these incomprehensible crimes.€
€The Commission's findings reinforce the need for the UN Security Council to raise human rights alongside security and peace when it comes to North Korea,€ she added.
However, Hazel Smith, Director of the International Institute of Korean Studies UCLan, takes a different point of view. In her article €Crimes Against Humanity?€ published in €Critical Asian Studies€ journal, she says that much of the analysis does not follow the guidelines of scientific research.
In her opinion, the authors of the document mostly used information that fit their assumptions. For example, she notes almost complete absence of reference of data collected by other UN agencies, donor governments and nongovernmental organizations, particularly in the issues of food and medicine distribution.
€North Korea's nutritional statistics are [€¦] similar to many other countries with low levels of economic development. What these statistics reveal is not a government that is starving its children, but an economic and food crisis of long duration,€ Hazel Smith specified.
€Governments have the right to implement sanctions against other countries, but the way the debate is framed on North Korea is noticeable for the absence of discussion of the perennial dilemma as to whether sanctions damage the government or the long-suffering populations,€ she emphasized.
Hazel Smith also noted the tendency of most news agencies to demonstrate and distribute information on DPRK using a scheme similar to one used to inform the public about the Nicaraguan Revolution and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
€Common knowledge about Korea is not conveyed in a vacuum but organized and disseminated in order to persuade politicians to go to war,€ she stated.
In turn, John Swenson-Wright, Chatham House senior consulting fellow on Asia Programme, said that UN report on North Korea was €not unexpected.€
€The report exposes and demonstrates that the North Korean human rights record is appalling. It is an opportunity for the international community, for the first time, to document in real detail the extents and the long-standing pattern of human rights abuse [in DPRK]. We know from the testimony of defectors that many people are held in what are effectively concentration camps and punished without any means of appeal, and often the physical conditions of those people concentrated in camps is such that many people die in captivity,€ the expert said in an interview with news agency €PenzaNews.€
He suggested that there will be €very little if any steps€ taken by North Korea in response to this report, but placed emphasis on the symbolic and rhetorical significance of the conducted investigation.
Also, the analyst pointed out the critical role of China in this conflict and said that the situation will depend on whether it approves the recommendations of the UN report to move to the International Criminal Court (ICC). In his opinion, this will not happen, because China is not going to sanction such measures.
€I think the human rights abuse is the case that should be in the spotlight of international attention on the DPRK, making clear that international community is solely opposed to this, and raising public awareness. More than that, it requires a much more ambitious agenda trying to find mechanisms to bring DPRK back into the international community and deal with a nuclear issue,€ he said.
David Hawk, the leading expert on human rights in North Korea, described the UN Commission of Inquiry report on human rights violations in the DPRK as €the most authoritative and definitive account of these severe violations.€
According to him, in March the UN human rights council in should adopt a resolution recognizing and condemning the crimes against humanity that North Korea commits against its people, after which the issue should be submitted to the UN Security Council (UNSC) to be referred to the International Criminal Court.
In his opinion, the further actions will depend on the fact if China and Russia will veto a referral to the ICC, and if the US will put China in the situation where it may have to use its veto power.
€If the DPRK wants to join the 21st century and have normalized relations with, and trade, aid and investment from the outside world, it will have to change its human rights policies. If they want to keep their current combination of Korean feudalism and 1930/1940 Stalinism, then there is very little the outside world can do,€ emphasized the expert.
Meanwhile, Phil Robertson, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch Asia division, stated that the report will make it impossible for any state to say that they do not know what is happening in the DPRK.
€The UN report is a scathing indictment of the human rights crimes of the North Korea government, revealing that the abuses are systematic and pervasive, and done as a matter of state policy. This is a huge blow to Kim Jong-Un and the North Korean government, who now stand accused of crimes against humanity - and now it is up to the UN and the international community to find a way to hold North Korean leaders accountable for their actions against their own people. North Korea has been revealed as among the worst of the worst of the world's human rights abusing governments, and governments like China or
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