Latest news with #UNHumanRightsCouncil-appointed
Scoop
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Scoop
‘Silence Is Complicity,' Warns Activist Who Fled DPR Korea
20 May 2025 When they eventually did, her mother said to her, 'If you are going to die anyway, better to be shot crossing the two-mile border than starve here.' Shortly thereafter they fled from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, more commonly known as North Korea. Ms. Kim gave testimony to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday during a meeting convened to discuss human rights abuses and violations in DPRK: 'The human rights situation in the country has been of grave concern for years, and, in many respects, is deteriorating,' Ilze Brands Kehris, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, told delegates. The representative from DPRK denounced the meeting, insisting that the information presented was a 'fabrication.' Wide-ranging abuses North Koreans have been forced to exist in 'absolute isolation' for many years, according to UN Special Rapporteur on human rights for the country, Elizabeth Salmón. The independent UN Human Rights Council-appointed expert said this isolation has exacerbated the impact of multiple rights violations which include forced labour systems, infringement on freedom of expression and movement, torture and the forced disappearance of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The DPRK has also denied entry to humanitarian aid despite UN data which suggests that it is desperately needed – 11.8 million people, or 45 per cent of the population, are estimated to be undernourished and more than half the population lacks adequate sanitation. Instead of social services, Pyongyang has prioritized militarisation, exacerbating human rights violations, said the Special Rapporteur. 'As the DPRK expands its extreme militarization policies, it exacerbates the extensive reliance on forced labour and quota systems, showing how peace, security and human rights are strongly interrelated,' Ms. Salmón said. 'Please do not turn away' Ms. Kim pleaded with delegates and UN officials to take action. ' Please do not turn away from the innocent lives being lost in North Korea and elsewhere. Silence is complicity,' she said. Ms. Kehris noted that the international community has taken many steps in past decades to address ongoing human rights abuses in the DPRK but that these actions have failed to change the status quo. 'Given the gravity and scale of the violations, and inability or unwillingness of the [DPRK] to pursue accountability, international accountability options must be considered, including referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court, ' she said. Despite such challenges, the senior official did note that Pyongyang has shown 'increased willingness' to engage with her office, OHCHR. In September, OHCHR is due to present a report to the Human Rights Council which will make new proposals on improving the situation. In her remarks, Ms. Salmón insisted that long-term accountability for the DPRK must go hand in hand with peace. 'Peace is a foundation for human rights. Human rights cannot thrive without peace. In this rapidly developing political climate, we must act together to prevent geopolitical tensions from destabilizing the Korean Peninsula,' she said. Hope for the future It has been more than 25 years since Ms. Kim fled: ' One day, I hope to return to North Korea, hand in hand with my daughters, to show them a North Korea not defined by control and fear but filled with freedom and hope, ' she said.
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
UN Investigator: Trump's Gaza Plan Amounts to Illegal ‘Ethnic Cleansing'
Donald Trump's plan to forcibly displace Gazans so the United States can 'own' the Gaza strip amounts to 'ethnic cleansing' and is against international law, a United Nations expert said. The president on Tuesday announced, in a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 'The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We'll do a job with it, too. We'll own it.' Trump has said that he wants to transform Gaza into 'the Riviera of the Middle East.' 'Basically the United States would view it as a real estate transaction where we'll be an investor in that part of the world,' Trump said Friday. In order to accomplish this, Trump has proposed moving nearly 2 million Palestinians out of Gaza into nearby countries such as Jordan and Egypt, saying he wants to 'clean out that whole thing.' But Navi Pillay, chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, says this plan 'amounts to ethnic cleansing.' 'Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,' Pillay told Politico in an interview. Pillay is a longtime UN investigator who more than a decade ago called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. 'There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,' Pillay added. Human Rights Watch also criticized Trump's proposal as ethnic cleansing and against international law. 'Standing beside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government was responsible for this policy and is wanted for atrocity crimes by the International Criminal Court, President Donald Trump suggested displacing Palestinians on an even larger scale and 'taking over' Gaza as potential U.S. policy in light of the destruction in Gaza,' said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. 'It would move the U.S. from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities.' Netanyahu — who has led a more than year long military assault on Gaza following Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — said it was 'worth listening carefully to' Trump's proposal. 'International law applies equally, without double standards for a state's friends,' Pillay said. This past October, Pillay and a team of UN Human Rights Council-appointed experts released a report that concluded Israel has committed war crimes and attempted to shatter Gaza's healthcare system while intentionally targeting medical personnel and facilities, including torturing healthcare workers. 'Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system,' Pillay said at the time. Since taking office, Trump has lifted restrictions put in place by the Biden administration that had halted the sale of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Biden stopped the sales because the high payload munitions were being used in densely populated areas of the strip. Trump just this weekend defied Congress by pushing forward an $8 billion weapons sale to Israel. Biden had announced the sale early last month, but it had not gone through yet because it was under congressional review by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Trump now appears to be circumventing congressional approval. In order to stop the sale, Congress would need a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate. With Republicans controlling both houses, that is highly unlikely. Israel and Hamas are currently engaged in a ceasefire. Israel's recent attacks on Gaza have killed more than 46,600 Palestinians, with one study estimating 64,260 Palestinians died from traumatic injuries between Oct. 2023 and June 2024. Pillay said that she would 'support' the International Criminal Court if it charged Israel with apartheid. 'Apartheid is one of the manifestations of control there,' she said in reference to Israel's occupation of Palestine. More from Rolling Stone UnitedHealth Is Sick of Everyone Complaining About Its Claim Denials Palestinians in the West Bank Describe How Israeli Settlers Are Seizing Land She Helped America Elect More Women. She Says We're Not Done Yet Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
