For North Korea summit, human rights an afterthought

Waddress in January and hosted a group of North Korean escapees in the Oval Office.

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, criticized Trump for pledging to preserve Kim’s stranglehold on power. “You shouldn’t be giving assurances to a totalitarian leader,” he said.

Sifton added that the North’s nuclear program has been supported by its use of forced labor.

A senior White House official said Trump and his advisers see the president’s foreign policy as driven by the interests of the American people rather than matters such as human rights. A second official said Trump and his team believe a human rights push is inherently part of the president’s message that North Korea would see massive foreign investment if it denuclearizes because it would help alleviate the conditions of the North Korean people and could even lead to a more democratic and open system. The officials were not authorized to discuss internal thinking by name and requested anonymity.

Trump is facing calls from Capitol Hill to not ignore Kim’s human rights record during the potential sit-down — and failure to address those concerns could hamstring the congressional approvals likely required for any agreement with Kim.

The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, said Wednesday that the North’s human rights record needs to be addressed. “The Trump administration must elevate human rights and the fundamental issue of human dignity to be part of the agenda for any meeting with Kim Jong Un,” he said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told lawmakers Wednesday that he had raised the issue of human rights with Kim “and it will be part of the discussions as we move forward.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckakbee Sanders on Tuesday defended the morality of offering assurances to Kim. “The goal and the purpose of these conversations would be to have complete and total denuclearization of the Peninsula,” she said.

Kim is on a Treasury Department blacklist for human rights abuses, removal from which Sifton said is a likely concession Kim will seek. He added that Kim should not be granted that request as part of denuclearization talks because “you’re basically saying we’re going to give you a pass on human rights if you denuclearize.”

The U.S. imposed those sanctions two years ago as part of the Obama administration’s effort to isolate North Korea, but it came as the North Korean government rapidly developed its nuclear program. It was the first time that Kim had been personally sanctioned, and the first time that any North Korean officials had been blacklisted in connection with rights abuses. Announcing the sanctions, the U.S. accused Kim’s North Korea of cruelty and hardship, “including extrajudicial killings, forced labor and torture.”

White House officials have pushed back publicly against the notion that Trump has deprioritized international human rights. They point to Trump’s rollback of his predecessor’s opening with Cuba and his comments about the devastation wrought by the Islamic State group and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

But the list of countries on which Trump has been largely silent about human rights includes Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Philippines. Trump’s State Department has been critical of those countries, particularly in its annual report on human rights released last month, but the president has often gone out of his way to avoid criticizing those countries’ leaders personally.

Just last week, before Trump hosted the president of Uzbekistan at the White House, officials emphasized to reporters that Trump would raise the issue of human rights in the country, but the president made no public mention of the issue.

Asked last year aboard Air Force One while flying from China to Vietnam about his responsibility to raise the issue of human rights with his counterparts, Trump suggested that tabling the issue in an effort to cut other deals is in the greater good.

“We can save many, many, many lives by making a deal with Russia having to do with Syria,” he said.

ASHINGTON (AP) — Ahead of a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Donald Trump’s focus has been on stagecraft, the will-they-won’t-they drama and visions of a legacy-defining nuclear deal. The human rights woes of North Koreans have been more of an afterthought.