…As Jurist says Kim Jong-un should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity***
Rex Tillerson has said that the US is ready to begin exploratory talks with North Korea “without preconditions”, but only after a “period of quiet” without new nuclear or missile tests.
The secretary of state’s remarks appeared to mark a shift in state department policy, which had previously required Pyongyang to show it was “serious” about giving up its nuclear arsenal before contacts could start. And the language was a long way from repeated comments by Donald Trump that such contacts are a “waste of time”.
Tillerson also revealed that the US had been talking to China about what each country would do in the event of a conflict or regime collapse in North Korea, saying that the Trump administration had given Beijing assurances that US troops would pull back to the 38th parallel, which divides North and South Korea, and that the only US concern would be to secure the regime’s nuclear weapons.
Earlier this week it emerged that China is building a network of refugee camps along its 880-mile (1,416km) border with North Korea, in preparation for a potential exodus that could be unleashed by conflict or the collapse of Kim Jong-un’s regime.
Speaking at the Atlantic Council thinktank in Washington, Tillerson made it explicit that the message to Pyongyang had changed and that the North Korean regime did not have to commit to full disarmament before direct diplomacy could take off.
“We are ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk. We are ready to have the first meeting without preconditions. Let’s just meet,” Tillerson said. “And then we can begin to lay out a roadmap … It’s not realistic to say we are only going to talk if you come to the table ready to give up your program. They have too much invested in it.
“Let’s just meet and let’s talk about the weather,” the secretary of state said. “If you want … and talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table if that’s what you’re excited about.”
However, he then laid down one condition and said there should be a “period of quiet” in which such preliminary talks could take place. He portrayed it as a practical consideration.
“It’s going to be tough to talk if in the middle of our talks you decide to test another device,” he said. “We need a period of quiet.”
Tillerson’s comments came as Kim Jong-un vowed to make North Korea the “world’s strongest nuclear power”.
Kim told workers behind the recent test of a new missile that his country “will victoriously advance and leap as the strongest nuclear power and military power in the world”, in a ceremony on Tuesday, according to the state news agency, KCNA.
Daryl Kimball, the head of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said that the US would have to carry out confidence-building measures for meaningful talks to start.
“Secretary Tillerson’s proposal for direct talks with North Korea without preconditions is overdue and welcome,” Kimball said. “However, in order to get to such talks going, the US side as well as North Korea must demonstrate more restraint. For North Korea, that means a halt to all nuclear and ballistic missile tests, and for the United States, refraining from military maneuvers and overflights that appear to be practice runs for an attack on the North.
In the meantime, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and other officials should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity committed in the authoritarian nation’s camps for political prisoners, three renowned international jurists said Tuesday.
The jurists’ report is based on testimony from defectors and experts on the camps, believed to hold between 80,000 and 130,000 inmates. It cites evidence of systematic murder, including infanticide, and torture, persecution of Christians, rape, forced abortions, starvation and overwork leading to “countless deaths”.
The report, drafted with the International Bar Association’s support, is billed as an unofficial follow-up to a UN investigation in 2014 finding reasonable grounds to conclude crimes against humanity had been committed in North Korea.
The three judges have served on past international tribunals: Navi Pillay, a former UN high commissioner for human rights; Mark Harmon who served on a tribunal trying Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia; and Thomas Buergenthal, who survived Auschwitz as a child and was a judge on the International Court of Justice.
North Korea “continues to deny the very existence of these political prisons”, the report says. “Yet, detailed satellite imagery, as well as the corroborated testimony of scores of former prisoners and state actors with firsthand knowledge of the prisons, established the existence of this prison system, and the horrific practices that occur therein, beyond any doubt.”
The jurists conclude that 10 of the 11 internationally recognized crimes against humanity have been committed. They say many of the prisoners are family members of individuals accused of political wrongdoing – a form of collective punishment against “class enemies” that dates back to the 1950s. Such victims are subject to arbitrary detention, torture, summary execution or life sentences. Hundreds of thousands of inmates are estimated to have died in camps over the years, the report says.
Among the abuses reported: starving prisoners are regularly executed when caught scavenging for food; abortions being performed by injecting motor oil into the wombs of pregnant women, according to a former North Korean army nurse; and firing squad executions of prisoners who attempt to escape.
Crimes continue to be committed in the camps, and the judges conclude Kim, members of the state security department and prison guards are culpable. They call on the international community to initiate proceedings at International Criminal Court, or a special international tribunal, to hold them accountable.
Although international pressure on North Korea over its dire human rights record has escalated since the issuance of the UN report in 2014, there remains little chance of a referral to the ICC. China and Russia, permanent members of the security council with veto powers, oppose it.
UN rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein told the council this week that North Korea’s leadership has cracked down further on human rights as tensions have escalated over its nuclear and missile tests, and “horrific” prison conditions have become more severe. He said the reported five secret political prison camps serve as “a powerful instrument of control”.
North Korea’s UN mission strongly condemned Monday’s meeting, calling it “a desperate act of the hostile forces which lost the political and military confrontation with the DPRK that has openly risen to the position of nuclear weapon state”. It called the human rights issue in the country “non-existent”.
Guardian UK
