By Ju-min Park and Sohee Kim
SEOUL, Feb 16 (Reuters) – After a year of investigation, the
United Nations is set to release a detailed report on human
rights violations in North Korea, but defectors from the country
and experts are deeply sceptical it will have any effect on the
regime in Pyongyang.
The U.N. 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, a former chief justice of Australia 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 World War 2.
But any attempt to follow up after the final report is
issued on Monday will most likely be blocked by China. North
Korea itself labels any attack on its human rights record as a
U.S.-led conspiracy.
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, a non-signatory to the
International Criminal Court.
“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”.
“The Human Rights Council, the biggest organisation in the
U.N., has not solved any problems,” Shin said in an interview in
Seoul ahead of the report’s release.
In March 2013, the Council established the Commission of
Inquiry to investigate violations of human rights in North Korea
and to seek out those accountable, “in particular where the
violations may amount to crimes against humanity.”
More than 200,000 people are believed to be held in North
Korean prison camps, according to independent estimates.
The U.N. panel has worked to bring new attention to the
allegations of horror at North Korea’s gulags with evidence and
testimony from exiles, including camp survivors, in Seoul,
Tokyo, London and Washington but has failed to gain access to
North Korea.
Shin said China continues to use North Korea as a tool to
keep U.S. influence in the region under control.
“So far China has neglected North Korea’s human rights issue
and supported its dictatorship,” said Shin, who is scheduled to
address the U.N. Human Rights Council in March when the panel’s
findings are formally presented.
WON’T BAT AN EYELID
After more than two years in power, North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un shows no signs of changing the iron-fisted rule of his
predecessors, forging ahead with a reign of terror and ordering
the execution of his powerful uncle following a brutal public
purge.
“North Korea won’t bat an eyelid,” said Hwang Jae-ok, vice
president of the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul,
who has extensively studied Pyongyang’s human rights record. “It
has built up a strong tolerance to sanctions and pressure.”
The North has been under gradually tougher international and
U.S. sanctions since its first nuclear test in 2006.
The sanctions have not stopped Kim, believed to be in his
early 30s, from stepping up the nuclear and missile programmes
launched by his father and accomplishing what experts have said
were notable successes that have turned the clock back on years
of disarmament efforts led by Washington.
Human rights activists hope the panel’s report work and the
global attention it generates will seep back across North Korea.
But Baek Kyung-yoon, a North Korean female army captain who
fled to the South in 2000, said her former compatriots are
unlikely to have the luxury of pondering about human rights or
anticipating improvement.
“Loyalty (to the regime) is everything and it’s nonsense to
discuss human rights there,” Baek said on Wednesday, ahead of
the premiere of “The Apostle: He Was Anointed By God”. The
Korean-language film is based on her experience of ordering the
torture of a man who possessed a few pages from the Bible.
A U.S. Christian missionary, Kenneth Bae, was sentenced last
year to 15 years of hard labour after being convicted of state
subversion. Pyongyang has abruptly rescinded a visit by U.S.
special envoy to seek Bae’s release for a second time.
Religious persecution is one of 11 areas of inquiry by the
U.N. panel, which also include food deprivation, torture,
executions and abductions.
Despite his frustration with the lack of visible progress,
Shin, who had a finger chopped off with a butcher knife by
prison guards as a punishment, still hopes the United Nations
can bring change in North Korea.
“Personally the COI (Commission of Inquiry) is my last
remaining hope. Even if there is little chance for change, I am
betting everything I have.”
(Editing by Jack Kim and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
