Members of the Security Council
The U.N. Security Council took up the issue of North Korea’s bleak human rights situation for the first time yesterday (Macau time), a groundbreaking step toward possibly holding the nuclear-armed but desperately poor country and leader Kim Jong Un accountable for alleged crimes against humanity. North Korea quickly denounced the move.
The meeting appeared to be the first time that any country’s human rights situation has been scheduled for ongoing debate by the U.N.’s most powerful body, meaning that the issue now can be brought up at any time. It also came amid U.S. accusations that North Korea was behind a devastating hacking attack.
“Today, we have broken the council’s silence. We have begun to shine a light, and what it has revealed is terrifying,” U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said.
International pressure has built this year on Pyongyang after a U.N.-backed inquiry found grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed under policies “established at the highest level of the State for decades.” In a letter to Kim, the commission also warned that he could be held accountable.
China and Russia, which hold veto power as permanent council members, protested the boldest effort yet to confront Pyongyang over an issue it has long disdained.
The council “should refrain from doing anything that might cause the escalation of tensions,” said China’s ambassador, Liu Jieyi.
An angry North Korea refused to recognize the meeting. “We totally reject the attempt” to bring the human rights issue to the council, North Korean diplomat Kim Song told The Associated Press shortly after the meeting began. He rejected the idea of dialogue or a visit to North Korea by a U.N. human rights investigator, and he insisted that the council should look into Washington’s recently released CIA torture report.
North Korea also has called the dozens of people who fled the North and aided the commission of inquiry “human scum.”
Diplomats touched on the inquiry’s more horrific details: Starving prisoners picking through cow dung for kernels of corn to eat. Rape. Forced abortions. Mass starvation. “I would not run through the macabre lists of atrocities,” Luxembourg Ambassador Sylvie Lucas said. “This would make us all nauseated.”
The U.N.-backed inquiry and the U.N. General Assembly have urged the 15-member council to refer North Korea’s human rights situation to the International Criminal Court. Permanent council members the U.S., France and the U.K. said it should be considered, but the council did not take action Monday.
The council has had North Korea’s nuclear program on its agenda for years, but Monday’s meeting opens the door to wider discussion of abuses alleged in the inquiry, including a harsh political prison camp system of up to 120,000 inmates. Pyongyang rejects the inquiry’s findings but never allowed it into the country. China did not allow a visit to its border area with North Korea, to which thousands have fled.
North Korea sent a sharp warning last month, threatening further nuclear tests after the U.N. General Assembly’s human rights committee voted to move the issue to the Security Council, which can take binding actions on matters of international peace and security.
Victor Cha, who served as director of Asia policy when George W. Bush was president, warned that North Korea likely sees both the council’s action and a now-shelved Hollywood film that depicts Kim’s assassination as hostile actions by the West.
“We could see escalation on the cyber front, but I wouldn’t rule out a nuclear test,” Cha said. “It feels like we are headed for some sort of crescendo.”
Two-thirds of the Security Council this month formally requested that North Korea’s human rights situation be placed on the agenda for ongoing debate, saying rights violations “threaten to have a destabilizing impact” on the region. Cara Anna, United Nations, AP
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