Submitted by : Donald Hank
North Korea’s Overlooked Atrocities
Pyongyang’s
decision to move forward with its December 12th ballistic missile test—last
year’s second—was made in defiance of multiple UN Security Council
resolutions and repeated warnings from the United States and the
international community. More than two decades of engaging and negotiating with
North Korea on security issues while relegating mass-atrocity crimes occurring
within the country to a low-grade status, has borne no fruit and, for the
millions who suffer from a state-induced famine and the hundreds of thousands of
innocents languishing in hellish concentration camps, this approach has proven
to be not only unethical but harmful. In the wake of UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights Navi Pillay’s January 14th call
for an international inquiry into what “may amount to crimes against
humanity,” and with reports of North Korea’s plan to conduct a third nuclear
test in the very near future now
surfacing, it is high time for the world community to fundamentally
reassess policy on North Korea to focus on the unparalleled humanitarian
and human rights emergency unfolding in the country today.
The North Korean government spent an estimated
$1.34 billion on its rocket program last year, according
to South Korea’s Ministry
of Unification. An official with the ministry stated these
resources could have taken care of food shortages within the country for
“four to five years.” Recent missile tests have taken place at a time
when North Korea’s famine is reportedly at one of the worst points in the
nation’s history. An October report (pdf)
from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) indicates
that North
Korea’s hunger situation is
at the “serious level,” with its Global Hunger Index (GHI) at 19
points, substantially higher than that of 15.7 in 1990. This is
very alarming news, especially since the famine in the 1990s claimed
the lives of between 2 to 3.5 million people. According to the
IFPRI, North Korea had the highest GHI growth rate since 1990 (21 percent)
of any country in the world, in spite of significant
international humanitarian assistance.
Those who cite poverty or natural disasters as the
antecedents for North Korea’s perpetual famine are gravely misguided. The
UN’s former special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Vitit
Muntarbhorn, stated categorically in his sixth and final report (pdf)
to the General Assembly in 2010 that the DPRK, which has the largest per
capita army and the highest military expenditures in the world according to GDP,
was not by any measure poor. Muntarbhorn noted that North Korea has very
large mineral resources and generates billions in export and trade, but
that the profits from this activity are being used entirely on the party
elite and for militarization. He concluded, and has since reiterated in
interviews, that the DPRK has the means at its disposal to feed its people
and that the real issue is not a lack of resources but the military-first
policy, blatant discrimination, and misappropriation of provisions
(including the mass diversion of international humanitarian aid) by the
authorities in Pyongyang. One must never forget the fact that the
North Korean state has brutally and systematically starved masses of people
within its prison camps for over six decades.
Among
several important reports analyzing North Korea’s human rights crimes
issued over the past 20 years, the law firm DLA
Piper published Failure to Protect: A Call for the UN Security
Council to Act in North Korea (pdf)
in 2006, which found that North Korea’s discriminatory and exploitative
food policy, resulting in famine, and its inhuman treatment of political
prisoners constituted crimes against humanity as defined by the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court. The report recommended the UN
Security Council adopt a resolution urging open access to North Korea for
humanitarian relief and for the release of political prisoners. In an op-ed for theNew York
Times the same year, the late
Czech President Vaclav Havel, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and former
Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik (who commissioned the
aforementioned report) called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to “make
his first official action a briefing of the Security Council on this dire
situation.” Again, in 2009 (pdf)
and 2010 (pdf),
the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea urged for the
“totality of the United Nations system, especially the Security Council,”
to be mobilized “to take measures to prevent egregious violations and
protect people from victimization,” and for an “end to impunity.” These
recommendations have yet to be implemented.
North Korea’s mass atrocity situation continues
annually to be the subject of a vast and growing body of documentation. In
recent years, the North Korean state has been found to be
comprehensively violating the UN genocide convention by targeting for
destruction every group protected by the international treaty while also
employing every method defined as genocidal in Article 2. Genocide Watch, a
nonpartisan NGO that exists “to predict, prevent, stop, and punish
genocide” and whose board of advisers includes respected anti-genocide
activists such as the retired Canadian general Roméo Dallaire and Samantha
Power (current senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights
for the US National Security Council), published a report (pdf)
on December 19, 2011, that determined conclusively that North Korea has
committed genocide as defined by Raphael Lemkin’s 1948 convention, stating
that there is “ample proof that genocide has been committed and mass
killing is still under way in North Korea.” Genocide is taking place
through the DPRK’s decades-long, racially based policy of killing the
half-Chinese babies of North Korean women forcibly repatriated by
China (constituting genocide on national, ethnic, and racial grounds)
and through its targeted and systematic extermination of its indigenous,
religious (predominately Christian) population and their families (genocide
on religious grounds).
Ignoring mass atrocities in North Korea is no
longer a viable option. Mass human rights violations within the country
amount to the most egregious of international crimes and a clear obligation
to act has been flouted for too long, and at an inconceivable cost. What is
long overdue is for the United States and other members of the
world community to bring the matter of crimes against humanity and
genocide in North Korea before the UN Security Council and, in all
bilateral or multilateral discussions and initiatives on North Korea, to
now prioritize the fundamental freedoms, rights, and lives of the
North Korean people.
Robert Park is a minister, human rights
activist, and founding member of the nonpartisan Worldwide Coalition to
Stop Genocide in North Korea, a nonprofit working to provide life-saving
resources to victims and their families in North Korea.
Photo Credit: Gilad
Rom
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