Defectors, experts and activists on Monday hailed the recent approval of a U.N. panel to probe human rights breaches in North Korea as a landmark step in a long battle to end the oppressive regime’s cruelties.
The U.N. Human Rights Council last week unanimously approved a formal inquiry mechanism, which they said would mark the “most credible, systemic and comprehensive probe ever” into rampant abuses there.
“The Commission of Inquiry is a victory for all North Korea human rights activists including myself,” Kang Chol-hwan, a defector and the head of Free the NK Gulag, said at a news conference in Seoul.
North Korean defector and activist Kang Chol-hwan (third from left) speaks at a news conference in Seoul on Monday along with Saenuri Party lawmaker Ha Tae-keung (third from right) and National Development Institute President Kim Suk-woo (center). (Yonhap News)
“It is raising hopes for not only us defectors and activists but also political prisoners and all other North Koreans by paving the way to bring leader Kim Jong-un to account at the International Court of Justice,” said Chung Kwang-il, who was locked in the Yodeok prison camp from 2000-03 and is now a member of the Seoul-based civic group.
The COI will look into rapes, torture, public executions, slave labor, abductions and other atrocities believed to be taking place at North Korea’s prison camps and elsewhere. It will be carried out for one year by three independent experts including U.N. Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman through interviews with defectors and ultra-high resolution satellite images.
Under the resolution, the UNHCR will transmit all COI reports to all relevant U.N. bodies and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for “appropriate action,” which experts said would possibly include legal measures.
“While boosting the probe’s efficacy by upgrading the existing rapporteur system, the launch of the COI carries a strong message that the U.N. may ultimately handle it as an international criminal issue through independent fact-finding and systematic collection of evidence,” said Jhe Seong-ho, a former ambassador for human rights and now international law professor at Chung Ang University in Seoul.
“The ICC has mainly been about war crimes but now it may deal with crimes against humanity despite realistic constrains if the Security Council comes forward.”
Saenuri Party lawmaker Ha Tae-keung visited Geneva with a group of activists early this month to meet with U.N. officials including Darusman and diplomats from other countries and campaign for the establishment of the COI.
He cited the case for Syria to counter lingering skepticism over the COI’s impact due to North Korea’s deep reclusiveness and likely denial of investigators’ entry.
After a third round of surveys into refugee-flooded neighbors like Jordan, some 50 countries and top U.N. officials including High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay have been calling for the referral to the Bashar al-Assad regime to the ICC, Ha said.
“North Korea will face a similar situation as U.N. investigators will interview a pool of more than 24,600 defectors in South Korea and others in such countries as Cambodia and Mongolia,” he said.
The former activist urged Pyongyang to cooperate with the multinational team and accept its future findings or continue to defy international pressure and face an international trial.
“The North wrongly thinks that the team will not be able to confirm without their clarification,” Ha said.
“Under this mechanism the facts automatically become accepted as true even though they refuse to define their stance. Yet if they cooperate the situation will significantly change toward dialogue rather than taking it to the Security Council.”
By Shin Hyon-hee (
heeshin@heraldcorp.com)