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WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (Korea Bizwire) — The former head of a U.N. investigative panel on North Korea’s human rights issue called Tuesday for renewed international attention to the problem, saying looking away from the issue amounts to turning away from what the Nazis did in the 1930s.
Michael Kirby, a retired Australian judge who headed the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) that looked into the North’s human rights violations, made the appeal during a seminar in Washington, saying the issue has been overshadowed by the Islamic State and other Middle Eastern matters.
After a yearlong investigation, the panel issued a landmark report last year saying North Korean leaders are responsible for “widespread, systematic and gross” violations of human rights and the International Criminal Court should take up the issue as “crimes against humanity.”
The COI report later led to the U.N. General Assembly adopting a resolution calling for referring the North to the ICC for human rights violations. The U.N. Security Council also adopted the issue as an official agenda item and held discussions on it for the first time.
“Now, since that time … a lot has happened in our world and much of it has been focused in what we call the Middle East. The terrible events that have been unfolding in the Middle East and in the Arab lands are naturally the focus of international news media,” Kirby said.
“But the result of that is that North Korea has definitely gone off the main attention,” he said during the seminar organized by Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
Kirby stressed that North Korea is a serious issue not only because of its human rights violations, but also because its nuclear and missile programs. Unless dealt with now, the North will be “a real trouble and harassment” to the United States too, he said.
“I think it’s fair to say that although Islamic State and Syria and Libya and Iran and all the other countries that grab our leaders’ attention around the world, although they are the proper matters of concern, North Korea must not go off the agenda because of the peril that it presents to itself, to its own people, to the Korean Peninsula and to the world,” he said.
Kirby emphasized that it is unacceptable to look away from the problem even after the COI report.
“It is as if in the 1930s, somebody with authority had gone into the Nazi, the Fascist land and reported on what was happening and then we had turned away. That would be totally unacceptable and it’s totally unacceptable today,” Kirby said.
“We have to grab again the attention of our leaders and the international community and make sure that something is done to follow up the report of the Commission of Inquiry,” he said.
Kirby said he hopes the U.N. Security Council will take up the issue again in December when the U.S. serves as president of the Council.
He also said that Marzuki Darusman, the U.N. special rapporteur on North Korea’s human rights situation, is working on a COI-made recommendation to use countries like Venezuela and Cuba, which are considered friendlier to North Korea, as bridges between the North and the U.N.
Earlier in the day, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) also called for the U.S. to do more to tackle growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, saying the President Barack Obama administration’s approach, commonly known as “strategic patience,” to Pyongyang has been a “strategic failure.”
“While our nation’s attention is rightfully focused on the Middle East, the North Korean threat has grown exponentially and the United States is seemingly falling asleep at the switch to this grave threat. It is clear that our policy of strategic patience has been a strategic failure,” the senator said.
Citing expert estimates, Gardner said the North is already believed to have up to 20 nuclear warheads and the stockpile is expected to grow to as many as 100. Pyongyang is also feared to have the capability of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the continental U.S., he said.
“If the United States does not pursue increased action against North Korea now, we could face much greater and immensely consequential challenges in the future,” he said.
Earlier this month, Gardner introduced a bill calling for imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang for its nuclear program, human rights abuses and cyber attacks. Gardner said the bill would “would elevate the human rights issue in North Korea to the forefront of U.S. policy.”
Amb. Lee Jung-hoon, South Korea’s human rights envoy, said he believes the North’s human rights situation has become worse since new leader Kim Jong-un took office.
“The sense of political instability is greater today under Kim Jong-un leadership than it’s ever been before, perhaps under his father Kim Jong-il or his father Kim Il-sung,” he said.
The young North Korean leader is “really going out of his way to establish his leadership” and that is why “we’re seeing so many high-level purges” of high-level North Korean officials, Lee said.
(Yonhap)
