UN investigator wants human rights included in any North Korea summit
Any progress in the US nuclear talks with Pyongyang must be accompanied by discussions on improving human rights, the UN investigator on North Korea said yesterday.
US President Donald Trump has agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by the end of May to discuss the future of the latter’s nuclear weapons programme.
The two Koreas will hold a summit by the end of next month at the truce village of Panmunjom, on their border.
“Today, we witness what appears to be a potential for rapid progress on the political and security front, with communication channels steadily building up between the two Koreas and the US, and historical summit plans for the future,” Tomas Ojea Quintana, UN special rapporteur on human rights, told the world body’s Human Rights Council.
“Let me urge North Korea to consolidate this rapprochement with a parallel opening to human rights review. My main message today is that any advancement on the security dialogue should be accompanied by a parallel expansion on the human rights dialogue.
“The country’s extensive penitentiary system and severe restrictions on all forms of free expression, movement and access to information continue to nurture fear of the state and leave people at the mercy of unaccountable public officials.”
The delegation of North Korea, which does not recognise Mr Ojea Quintana’s mandate, did not attend the debate in Geneva. It denies accusations of rights abuses against its people.
Mr Ojea Quintana leads a group of independent experts given the job by the Human Rights Council to find practical ways to hold offenders in North Korea accountable.
A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report on North Korean human rights stated that human rights offences committed by the government included murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortion and other sexual violence. In 2015, the UN Security Council discussed North Korea’s bleak human rights record as a formal agenda item for the second year in a row.
Human Rights Watch has called North Korea “one of the most repressive authoritarian states in the world, ruled for seven decades by the Kim family and the Worker’s Party of Korea”.
Jason Mack, a first secretary at the US mission to the UN in Geneva, denounced extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence and forced labour.
“Many of these abuses are committed in political prison camps where an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 individuals are detained, including children and family members of the accused,” Mr Mack said.
“North Korea also uses forced labour including export of North Korean workers and child labourers to underwrite the regime’s illicit weapons programmes.”
The EU voiced deep concern at continuing offences, saying “some of which may amount to crimes against humanity”.
A UN report said human rights offences included murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape and forced abortion