Eminent world human rights advocates urged the UN on Monday to take advantage of the attention focussed on North Korea's nuclear arms program to press the Stalinist regime over its lamentable human rights record.
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel, ex-prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway and Nobel peace prize laureat Elie Weisel said the regime of Kim Jong-Il was responsible for "one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today". "For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of the North Korean people would risk driving the country away from discussions over its nuclear program," the trio wrote in an opinion piece in The New York Times.
"But with his recent actions, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, has shown that this approach neither stopped the development of his nuclear program nor helped North Koreans," they said, referring to Pyongyang's October 9 test of a nuclear bomb.
The three said an independent report they commissioned into North Korea's treatment of its population yielded "deeply disturbing" evidence that the Pyongyang government was "actively committing crimes against humanity -- against its own people".
It said North Korea "allowed perhaps one million -- and possibly many more" of its people to die during a famine in the 1990's, when the government diverted resources from food purchases to its military and nuclear programs. Millions more North Koreans face "real hardship" in the coming winter months while donors, including the UN World Food Program, have cut back food aid because the government will not let them monitor distribution to ensure the assistance doesn't go to the military, the three said.
They also charged that North Korea was holding up to 200,000 people in political prisons, including the children and elderly relatives of suspected dissenters.
"Now that Kim Jong-il's nuclear weapons test has attracted the attention and condemnation of the world, it is imperative to seize this opportunity and once again engage with Pyongyang on human rights and humanitarian concerns," they said.
They urged the UN Security Council to adopt a new, non-punitive resolution, on North Korea calling for open access to the country for humanitarian relief, the release of political prisoners and access for the UN special rapporteur on human rights.
They also called on the incoming secretary-general, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, to make his first official action a briefing of the Security Council on the "dire situation" in the north.