Commentary 22/02/18 We must not allow North Korea's crimes to slip off the radar

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We must not allow North Korea's crimes to slip off the radar

Eight years after a no-holds-barred UN report, little has been done to hold a brutal regime to account

Published: February 18, 2022 03:25 AM GMT ▾

Exactly eight years ago to the day yesterday, a United Nations body did something quite rare: it told the full, comprehensive, unambiguous, undiplomatic, cold, hard truth about one of the most brutal, repressive, bloody and ruthless regimes in the world, and it outlined a plan of action. No fudge, no obfuscation, no compromise — just the facts, an analysis of what they meant, and a set of recommendations for what to do.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on North Korea and its report, published on Feb. 17, 2014, should always be remembered as the gold standard for international investigation, the UN doing what it is meant to do but so often fails to do — the UN at its best.

But the report should not simply go down in history as a great report. It should not sit on bookshelves gathering dust or being perused by students of international relations or humanitarian and human rights law as an academic text.

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Distinguished Australian judge Michael Kirby, who chaired the inquiry, and his colleagues — the former Indonesian attorney-general and UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, Marzuki Darusman, and Serbian human rights expert Sonja Biserko — did not devote an entire year of their lives, hearing hours and hours of harrowing testimony, interrogating dozens of experts and escapees, reading through piles of witness evidence, only to have Feb. 17 marked each year as a memorial to their report by a handful of activists like me.

They devoted their time and considerable expertise to painstakingly gathering the most comprehensive dossier of evidence there has yet been about the North Korean regime’s terrible atrocities against its own people, with the purpose of motivating the international community to respond. Their efforts — and, even more importantly, the suffering and courage of the brave North Koreans who shared their stories in the inquiry’s public hearings — deserve a response and demand global action.

To take a step back for a moment, let me reflect on what led to the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry in the first place, and then its conclusions.

It documented a catalogue of atrocities including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, severe religious persecution, enforced disappearances and starvation

In 2007, the human rights organization with which I have been involved in various capacities for almost thirty years, CSW, published a groundbreaking report, North Korea: A Case to Answer, A Call to Act. Among other recommendations, that report called for the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry. It was one of the very first to do so. Indeed, I remember people telling me that we were wasting our time, banging our heads against a brick wall, as the UN would never, ever do this. I took the view that, on the contrary, if enough of us banged our heads against a brick wall for long enough, we might manage to dislodge some bricks.

For several years, we advocated for this goal, often as a voice crying in the wilderness. Around 2010, I became aware of a few other human rights organizations starting to float the same idea, and before long one of the world’s three largest and most influential groups, Human Rights Watch, was making this recommendation. It became clear to me that disparate, uncoordinated, ad hoc efforts were not going to achieve anything, but that a coordinated, worldwide coalition might stand a chance of making a difference.

Eventually, in 2011, we launched the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), bringing together over 40 human rights organizations from across Asia, Europe, North America and beyond, including the world’s three big human rights groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), around one specific, focused goal: the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry.

The ICNK launched in Tokyo in September 2011, and within 18 months or so, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights both called for a Commission of Inquiry.

There was then an element of luck, as the composition of the Human Rights Council in 2013 was remarkably favorable to our proposal — surprisingly, most rights-abusing countries had rotated off the council and it consisted of a majority of member states that generally respect, defend and uphold human rights.

It was carpe diem time — a resolution was put to a vote, it passed, and the inquiry was established. Those of us banging our heads against a brick wall had, indeed, dislodged some bricks and achieved a breakthrough. Apparently, there’s an old Chinese phrase that said: “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

To allow such crimes of such gravity to continue with such impunity for so long with such silence and apathy is utterly unacceptable

The inquiry got underway, and in 2014 it delivered its clear judgment: that Kim Jong-un’s regime was committing crimes against humanity, “the gravity, scale and nature” of which “reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” It documented a catalogue of atrocities including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, severe religious persecution, enforced disappearances and starvation. All this should, in the inquiry’s recommendation, lead to a referral to the International Criminal Court.

For a few years, the inquiry’s recommendations were a live debate. Human rights in North Korea became an agenda item on the UN Security Council. The UN established a field office in Seoul — one of the inquiry’s recommendations — to continue to gather evidence. But in recent years, tragically, the issue has slipped from the world’s agenda.

Initially, it was actively driven off the agenda, both by South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in’s desire to shut down talk of human rights in the hope of rapprochement with Pyongyang and by US President Donald Trump’s erratic and misplaced lurch from condemning Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man” and comparing the size of their buttons to becoming his best friend, resulting in historic talks for which we all held our breath in cautious hope and were disappointed.

But it has since been driven further down the agenda — by the justifiable increasing outcry at the Uyghur genocide in China, the dismantling of freedoms in Hong Kong, the coup in Myanmar, all of which I am deeply involved with and care passionately about, and by the Covid-19 pandemic and now the Ukraine crisis.

However, it is now time to revive the cause of North Korean human rights, and specifically the Commission of Inquiry’s recommendations. To allow such crimes of such gravity to continue with such impunity for so long with such silence and apathy is utterly unacceptable.

Let’s hope the UN will appoint someone with the skills to hold the regime to account, persuade the regime to change and mobilize the world to act

This year is significant for at least two reasons.

First, on March 9, in less than three weeks, South Koreans go to the polls to elect a new president. It is not for me to intervene or interfere in South Korean politics. But I do hope and pray that Koreans will elect a president who will put human rights in North Korea back at the heart of peninsula policy.

And second, later this year the mandate of the current UN special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana, expires. It is vital that the mandate itself is renewed and that a credible appointment is made.

The three special rapporteurs so far — Thailand’s Vitit Muntarbhorn, Marzuki Darusman and Quintana — have all, in their different ways, brought great qualities to the role and pursued a mix of human rights advocacy, diplomacy, engagement and the pursuit of accountability. But none, despite their best efforts — and I deeply respect all three — has achieved any breakthroughs. Let’s hope the UN will appoint someone with the skills to hold the regime to account, persuade the regime to change and mobilize the world to act. That’s a tall order, but it is what is required.

So, as we remember the Commission of Inquiry, let’s not just mark it as an anniversary of a landmark in the past. Let’s take it as a wake-up call and a manifesto for action to continue the fight. It should be a living document, not a historic text. In the words of that groundbreaking CSW report 15 years ago, let’s remember North Korea and remember that its ruling regime has a case to answer, and we all have a call to act.

* Benedict Rogers is a writer, human rights activist and senior analyst for East Asia at the international human rights organization CSW. He is also co-founder and deputy chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission and co-founder of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK). He visited North Korea in 2010 with Lord Alton of Liverpool and Baroness Cox of Queensbury. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.