SEOUL: After a year of investigation, the United Nations is set to release a detailed report on human rights violations in North Korea that could pave the way for criminal prosecution in an international court.
But defectors from the country who have provided first-hand testimony of atrocities are deeply sceptical the report, to be issued today, will have any effect on the regime in Pyongyang. The UN Commission of Inquiry on human rights in North Korea was set up last March to begin building a case for possible criminal prosecution.
Michael Kirby, who chairs the independent inquiry, said after preliminary findings last year that inmates in North Korea’s prison camps suffered “unspeakable atrocities”, comparable with Nazi abuses uncovered after the Second World War.
“The entire body of evidence gathered so far points to what appear to be large-scale patterns of systematic and gross human rights violations,” Kirby, a former justice of Australia’s top court, told the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee last October, adding that Pyongyang had refused to cooperate with the inquiry.
But any attempt to follow up the final report with prosecution will most likely be blocked by China. North Korea itself labels any attack on its human rights record as a US-led conspiracy.
The preliminary report did not say what kind of prosecution might be considered. North Korea is not a member of the International Criminal Court, but the UN Security Council can ask the Hague-based court to investigate alleged abuses by non-signatories.
China, the North’s major ally and main benefactor, stands ready to veto any attempt to mobilise the Security Council to open an investigation against Pyongyang.
“In some respects I have been disappointed with the United Nations, although the U.N. is trying to resolve the issue” said Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean defector who has given the U.N. panel harrowing accounts of his life and escape from a prison camp. As a 13-year-old, he informed a prison guard of a plot by his mother and brother to escape and both were executed, according to a book on his life called Escape from Camp 14.
Reuters
