U.N. council hears of N. Korea rights crackdown

UNITED NATIONS -- North Korea's leadership has cracked down further on human rights as tensions have escalated over its nuclear and missile tests, the U.N. rights chief said Monday.

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein told the Security Council that the international security crisis sparked by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's military actions "is inseparable from concerns about the human-rights situation of the ordinary people in the country."

A chronic lack of food, partly because of resources that are diverted to the military, has made humanitarian aid provided by the U.N. and others "literally a lifeline for some 13 million acutely vulnerable individuals," he said.

Zeid urged the Security Council to assess the human-rights effect of sanctions that have slowed aid deliveries and to minimize the humanitarian consequences.

This was the fourth year the Security Council has discussed human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name. As in previous years, the meeting only went ahead after a procedural vote in the 15-member Security Council. At least nine nations were required to support having the session.

On Monday, the human-rights meeting was approved by 10 council members but drew opposition from Russia and China. Chinese Deputy U.N. Ambassador Wu Haitao, whose country is North Korea's closest ally, said the meeting would be "counterproductive" at a time of heightened tensions.

North Korea said its latest ballistic missile test demonstrated that it can threaten the U.S. mainland, and there is growing concern that it will soon be able to put a nuclear warhead on its missiles. President Donald Trump has vowed to stop the North Koreans from reaching such capability, increasing the possibility of conflict.

"Indeed, the context of military tensions seems to have deepened the extremely serious human-rights violations endured by the DPRK's 25 million people," the U.N. high commissioner for human rights said, using an acronym for the North's official name.

North Korea has barred U.N. human-rights officials from visiting the country, and its government has vehemently opposed the Security Council meetings on its rights situation and the annual resolutions by the U.N. General Assembly condemning its rights record. North Korea maintains that it upholds human rights.

But Zeid said people who have escaped from North Korea have reported "extremely widespread violations of rights in almost every aspect of people's lives."

"In recent months, military tensions have led to more severe controls over freedom of movement and civil and political rights for the people of the DPRK," he said.

Zeid pointed to new physical barriers being erected along North Korea's border and to increased surveillance.

He also criticized China for returning North Koreans who escape from their country, saying they "are routinely subjected to multiple forms of torture and ill-treatment," including women who are subjected "to invasive body searches" that may amount to rape under international law.

Zeid said his office has received more than 70 reports of women, men and children who avoided being sent back after Chinese authorities decided they were "economic migrants," disregarding "the overwhelming human-rights violations taking place in the country."

He also cited horrific conditions in prisons and labor camps and widespread torture in detention centers used to extract information about people who are planning to leave the country, illegally using foreign telecommunications networks to contact people abroad, or engaging in smuggling activities.

Detainees have to work in mines or on building projects, face beatings, "and are being fed so little they barely survive," Zeid said.

There are reportedly five secret political prison camps that instill fear and function as "a powerful instrument of control," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told the council that the human-rights violations against North Korea's people "are a means to a single end: keeping the Kim Jong Un regime in power."

"The regime is using that power to develop an unnecessary arsenal and support enormous conventional military forces that pose a grave risk to international peace and security," she said. "Their menacing march toward nuclear weapons begins with the oppression and exploitation of ordinary North Korean people."

A Section on 12/12/2017

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