The Right To Life and Human Rights in North Korea
Speech by David Alton (Lord Alton of Liverpool) at a meeting in the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea Hosted by the ROK Government. Friday February 10th 2023.
75 years ago, in 1948, the world was trying to come to terms with monstrous atrocities which had culminated in the Holocaust – the murder of 6 million Jews, and other minorities whose only crime was to be different. A new word entered the English language. It was crafted by a lawyer who had seen more than 40 members of his own family murdered in the Holocaust. The word was Genocide. Raphael Lemkin insisted that ‘If persecution of any minority by any country is tolerated anywhere, the very moral and legal foundations of constitutional government may be shaken.’
In 1948, when Lemkin was drafting the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – the Genocide Convention- it was seen as a way to ensure that the world would ‘Never Again’ witness atrocities of the kind committed by the Nazis. However, while the immense scale of the loss of life seen during World War II has (arguably) not been matched since, acts of genocide and atrocity crimes have continued to be perpetrated. Since that war, we have witnessed genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, Northern Iraq and now in China, Burma, Nigeria, and Tigray (and early signs of genocidal atrocities in Ukraine). This is not an exhaustive list.
And, ten years ago, in 2013, a United Nations Commission of Inquiry (CoI) chaired by the eminent Australian jurist, His Honour Mr. Michael Kirby, was established to investigate human rights violations in North Korea. The UN Human Rights Council mandated the Commission to “investigate the systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, with a view to ensuring full accountability, in particular for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity.”
When it reported in 2014, the Commission found that just miles from where we are meeting today crimes against humanity have been committed in North Korea and the COI called for North Korea to be referred to the International Criminal Court for prosecution. The Commission of Inquiry left open the question of whether a genocide has and is taking place.
The CoI found that it could certainly be argued that there is genocidal intent in the way in which North Korea set out to eliminate an entire class of people by deliberately creating the conditions that lead to massive numbers of fatalities. It found that over five decades hundreds of thousands of prisoners have been exterminated in political prison camps; that in the lifetime of three generations, entire groups of people, including families with their children, had perished in those death camps because of who they were, not for any actions they had carried out.
Intent to eliminate but not necessarily Genocide in a technical sense.
Political groups are not among the protected groups under the Genocide Convention. It should be amended to include political groups.
Although it has left a question mark about the targeting of people because of their religious affiliations, the Commission decided that rather than get into legalistic arguments about technical definitions it would follow the evidence. That led them to unanimously conclude that the State has committed crimes in North Korea that definitely amount to crimes against humanity – and it concluded that those responsible should be arraigned before the courts and brought to justice.
In this 75th year of both the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), it is worth returning to the foundation documents and in the case of the UDHR, it is difficult to see which, if any, of the 30 Articles North Korea is not in breach.
In the light of the evidence which has emerged from many of those thousands of escapees, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court should examine further the testimonies of those who were incarcerated or whose loved ones perished in the prison camps because of their religious beliefs – and consider whether this does indeed meet the test of Genocide Convention – and engage as it has done in the case of Myanmar – exploring the enforced displacement of thousands of North Koreans to countries that are members to the Rome Statute. Indeed, even in the UK, we have many brave North Koreans who have been shining a light on the atrocities in North Korea.
Another option would be to table a UN Security Council resolution referring the situation in North Korea to the ICC. And, if this is blocked by vetoes of China or Russia – we must proceed with establishing an Independent People’s Tribunal to consider the evidence.
I will return to the evidence and the findings of the COI in a moment but first, remind myself – and both of our countries as signatories to these great Declarations and Conventions –what it is that we say we affirm.
Article 1 of the UDHR insists that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Article 3 insists that “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”Without this right to life, of course, all other rights are worthless.
Article 4 abjures slavery; Article 5 asserts that “torture (mental or physical) inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” is not permissible; Article 6 insists on the rule of law; Article 12 states that no one will be subjected to arbitrary interference with privacy, family, or home; Article 13 requires the right to leave a country; 14 states that where there is persecution other countries must provide asylum; 17 provides the right to own property; Article 18 upholds the right to religious belief;Article 19 the right to freedom of opinion or expression and to seek and receive information regardless of frontiers; Article 21 provides for democratic government; Article 25 deals with the right to food and care; Article 26 with the right to education.
Other rights are outlined along with the duties of States to uphold the Declaration’s 30 Articles – and, in this case, the duty of the international community to uphold its responsibility to protect the population of North Korea.
How far North Korea is derelict in breaching Article after Article of the UDHR and how far the international community has been derelict in failing to act on the findings of the CoI – which it commissioned – can be seen by a cursory examination of the COI findings.
It unequivocally concluded that North Korea has systematically violated human rights including freedom of thought, expression and religion, the right to food – and more besides. The State has committed crimes against humanity including “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”
It found that “widespread, systematic and gross” “unspeakable atrocities”“on a vast scale” amount to “crimes against humanity” and Justice Kirby said they were “strikingly similar” to crimes committed by Nazi Germany.
In 2014, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 69/188 condemning North Korea and urged the Security Council to refer the findings to the ICC. The Security Council had an informal meeting which was boycotted by Russia and China and further attempts to seek a referral met the same fate.
In 2017, the UN Human Rights Council voted to look for legal strategies for eventual prosecutions and authorised the creation of a central repository for evidence – which was the right call – but the prosecution has not occurred. Changes in administration in both the Republic of Korea and the United States have also played their part in dampening the quest for accountability, although I strongly welcome ROK’s most recent insistence that it will do more to champion the human rights of North Koreans.
In the UK, where I continue as co-chair of the All-Party Group on North Korea we have continued to shine a light on what the CoI described as “a State without parallel.” We have done so because this is not just about what has happened in the past. The CoI said the gross violations and crimes are “ongoing … because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place.”
And we continue because in the intervening nine years since the CoI Report was published further evidence has emerged of the targeting of specific groups – particularly religious believers – which may well take those crimes beyond the threshold of genocide. It’s an issue I explore in detail in my book “State Responses to the Crime of Genocide”co-authored with Dr. Ewelina Ochab and published in 2022, and in my book “Building Bridges: Is There Hope for North Korea?”(2013), which contains first-hand testimonies of escapees and some of my own observations from four visits to North Korea.
Let me just mention two things today: China’s role in breaking the 1951 Refugee Convention by its repatriation of escaping North Koreans; and the plight of religious believers.
Since 2002 I have made 400 interventions about North Korea in Parliament – through questions, speeches and meetings – and 21 years ago first raised the issue of repatriation. In 2003 I told the House of Lords:
“Last October a North Korean Christian who had escaped from the country came to see me here at Westminster. His story was harrowing and disturbing. He told me how he had seen his wife, and all bar one of his children shot dead by Kim Jong-il’s militia. He subsequently escaped across the border to China with his one remaining son. The boy died en route…
He specifically raised the issue of repatriation of refugees:
“Some have been executed… When returned, they face torture, interrogation, and humiliation. Any woman who is returned and became pregnant while in China is forcibly aborted, supposedly to avoid the birth of babies “contaminated” by foreign influences. There are reports of repatriated North Koreans being corralled and bound together, with wire being passed around their wrists and through their noses.”
I pressed the UK Government to raise this failure to protect refugees with the PRC and received the supine and hand-washing response that it is for “the parties involved to interpret their obligations under this agreement.” The collaboration of the People’s Republic of China, in sending back to North Korea escapees and refugees, is in contempt of its obligations under international law – and makes a mockery of its occupation of a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
As for the targeting of religious adherents, as long ago as 2003 I told Parliament that “Becoming a Christian in North Korea is a serious crime. Many are thrown into camps or prisons, where they are kept in horrific conditions. There is evidence of water torture, severe beatings, sexual assault, and violation, as well as psychological and verbal abuse.”
The UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that: “there is an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” It found that “based on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s own figures, that the proportion of religious adherents among the DPRK’s population, who were mainly Christians, Chondoists and Buddhists, dropped from close to 24 per cent in 1950 to 0.016 per cent in 2002.”
A 2020 Report by Korea Future explored this issue in great detail – and I pay tribute to James Burt and the other authors and researchers. It established over 1,000 cases of religious freedom violations in North Korea from over 400 interviews with survivors and perpetrators.
This included cases where victims were intentionally killed by state agents. It has documented credible accounts of the execution of Christian adherents who had practiced within the territory of North Korea.
Among these cases, Ms. Kwon Eun Som and her grandchild were executed in July 2011. The execution was by firing squad and took place outside Hajong-ri in Onsong County. It was overseen by Onsong Ministry of State Security branch personnel, acting on the authority of the North Hamgyong Ministry of State Security in Chongjin. In another Report, in 2021, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) found that there “are ongoing, egregious, and systematic, and they are perpetrated and overseen by the active mobilization of organs of the North Korean government. For this reason, we find that the state is the source, the rationale, and the tool for the religious freedom violations documented in this report.” The report identified 68 cases of the state prosecuting individuals for their religion or belief or for their association with religious persons. Shamanic adherents accounted for 43 cases, 24 cases were related to Christianity, and one case was related to Cheondogyo: “We find that the denial of religious freedom is absolute.” I draw attention to the cases of Kim Jin Hyeon, Kim Chil Seok, Lee Se Ra, Ji So Yun, and Kim Hye Ri. USCRIF found that “At its most essential level, North Koreans experience the denial of the right to religious freedom from birth”…“religious acts, are denounced and portrayed as evil”… “Beyond the courtroom, public trials and public criticism sessions serve as extrajudicial forms of justice and punishment for religious and belief adherents.”
USCIRF says it “documented multiple instances of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment … against persons suspected of religious adherence.”
It “included physical beating; positional torture; deprivation of food, water, and sleep; verbal abuse; contaminated and polluted food; body cavity searches and forced nudity; the use of open toilets; hanging torture (also known as ‘Pigeon Torture’); and exposure to extreme violence inflicted upon fellow prisoners.”
Read the harrowing testimonies of Nam Tae Hee, Ko Sun Hee, Nam Jin Kyu, Ko Sun Hee and others. In the Reports conclusions it says that these appalling acts are “seemingly designed to remove all traces of Christianity and to repress and reduce the influence of Shamanism in society.”
Unsurprisingly, two weeks ago the charity, Open Doors, has again listed North Korea, in 2023 (for the nineteenth time out of twenty years), as the State in which, worldwide, Christians face the greatest level of persecution.
In the face of all of this, we must do more than make weak tea statements of concern.
The UK and ROK, with other democratic nations that believe in the rule of law – and the upholding of the UDHR and the Genocide Convention – must create an international coalition to keep these issues in the public eye – and to examine whether, for instance, the deliberate elimination of religious believers in DPRK may constitute genocide.
We must restore a twin-track approach of security-related issues alongside human rights questions (what I have called “Helsinki with a Korean Face”) in line with our responsibility to act.
We must call out gross violations against North Koreans and against persons from other jurisdictions including this one and Japan. We must call out forced repatriation by China.
We must continue to try and break the information blockade – and here I pay tribute to the UK Government and the BBC for launching, in 2003, broadcasts to the Korean Peninsula but as recently as last week I had to go and see Ministers in the UK Foreign Office to complain about the proposed short-sighted reductions in the Service.
We must call out executions, torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, abductions, disappearances, prison camps, mass incarceration, discrimination against and trafficking of women, forced abortions when interracial pregnancies occur (this is eugenics), guilt by association, the hoarding by elites of food and wealth (even when there is mass starvation and malnutrition), the misappropriation of resources used to threaten regional neighbours with weapons of mass destruction.
And we must demand accountability. That can be through new mechanisms that are not dependent on the Security Council and accountability should be linked to Magnitsky Sanctions on the perpetrators and those responsible. That is what the Genocide Convention was all about. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Demands. The UN Commission of Inquiry. The paths to justice in North Korea may be circuitous but countries that say that they believe in the rule of law must demonstrate to authoritarian dictatorships that we mean what we say.
Let me end where I began – with the Holocaust.
On 27 January 1945, the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated. As a young boy, Judge Thomas Buergenthal was incarcerated in Auschwitz. He survived. Judge Buergenthal throws down this challenge to each of us:
“The human mind is simply not able to grasp this terrible truth: a nation transformed into a killing machine programmed to destroy millions of innocent human beings for no reason other than that they were different … If we humans can so easily wash the blood of our fellow humans off our hands, then what hope is there for sparing future generations from a repeat of the genocides and mass killings of the past? … one cannot hope to protect mankind from crimes such as those that were visited upon us unless one struggles to break the cycle of hatred and violence that invariably leads to ever more suffering by innocent human beings.”
In our generation, we must rise to that challenge. Thank you for inviting me to address you.
