UN report urges probe of North Korea
2013-02-05 22:07
Geneva - The UN investigator for human rights in North
Korea urged the world body on Tuesday to open an inquiry into the secretive
Asian nation for possible crimes against humanity.
In a report to the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council, Marzuki
Darusman recommended that it authorise an investigation of North Korea's
"grave, widespread and systematic violations of human rights”.
The report to the UN's top human rights body cited
violations such as having prison camps, enforcing disappearances and using food
to control people.
North Korea's UN Ambassador in Geneva, So Se Pyong,
denounced the report and described Darusman — a former attorney general of
Indonesia — as a "politically motivated" official whose job amounts
to serving as "a marionette running here and there in order to represent
the ill-minded purposes of the string-pullers such as the US, Japan and the
member states of the [EU]."
The Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have
already condemned North Korea's human rights record, but the UN's top rights
official, Navi Pillay, said last month that stronger action is needed,
including an investigation authorised by the UN but performed by independent
experts.
Pillay said as many as 200 000 people are being held in
North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labour,
and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.
North Korea maintains that US hostility and the threat of
American troops in South Korea also are key reasons behind its nuclear
ambition.
The US stations about 28 500 troops in South Korea, a
legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace
treaty.
Last year, Darusman told the New York-based General
Assembly's human rights committee that he saw no improvement in human rights
under Kim Jong Un and urged the country's new leader to divert money from his
"military first" policy to help more than 60% of the population
suffering from a lack of food.
Darusman said Kim, who succeeded his father more than a
year ago, had made it his top priority to strengthen the military while about
16 million of North Korea's 25 million people suffer from hunger and
malnutrition.
- AP
