Latest News

An investigator for the United Nations, Marzuki Darusman, is expected to present a report to the council on Monday urging the creation of an international commission of  inquiry to follow up the abuses recorded in the eight years that a United Nations rapporteur has monitored human rights in the North.

 "An inquiry mechanism could produce a more complete picture, quantify and qualify the violations in terms of  international law, attribute responsibility to particular actors or perpetrators of  these violations, and suggest effective  courses of international action," Mr. Darusman said in the report.

His recommendation will be taken up  in a resolution sponsored by Japan  and the European Union that the 47-member council was expected to adopt when it votes later in March. The  proposal, backed by the United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, as well as various human rights organizations, is expected to  draw on concerns about  North Korea's conduct that prompted  both the council and the General  Assembly to pass resolutions last year  condemning Pyongyang.

 "We are in effect ramping up international political pressure on this unparalleled, systemwide failure in respect to  human rights," Eileen Chamberlain  Donahoe, the American ambassador to the  Human Rights Council, said by telephone. "We're hoping that even if it  doesn't crack the whole system that on  some of these issues we might see some  opening and some change because of  this pressure."

 Japan has been a strong supporter of a human rights investigation  into North Korea. The alleged kidnappings of Japanese citizens by North Korea remains a popular human rights and  political cause in Japan.

 The creation of a commission of inquiry would be a victory for defectors from North Korea, including a  handful of people said to be survivors of  the isolated country's infamous prison  camps who have resettled in South Korea and elsewhere. Some of them have  become the most vocal campaigners for  human rights in North Korea, holding  rallies, testifying about starvation and torture in prison gulags and arguing that  the international community must  break its silence about the people living  under one of the world's most systematic repressions of human rights.

 That argument has not always been  popular in their new home, South Korea. Many South Koreans believe that without an effective means of pressuring  North Korea, which has defied and survived decades of international sanctions, an open challenge against its human rights record would only make it more paranoid and repressive.

 South Korea used to abstain from any   United Nations vote on human rights  resolutions on North Korea. But after a  conservative party took power five  years ago, Seoul began voting for and even  leading such moves. It also supports the  creation of the commission of inquiry.

 Coupled with the new set of United Nations sanctions, the human rights report was expected to increase the pressure on   Mr. Kim's government. Reports of a  guarded relaxation of state control on  the economy in North Korea have been  alternating with signs of renewed  crackdown on outside influence.

Concern over its nuclear program has  sharpened international attention to  North Korea, but human rights activists  say that it had sidelined attention to  systemic abuses and that a commission of inquiry would help to give them greater visibility  that was long overdue.

 "Increased scrutiny by international  inquiry affords a measure of protection, especially when coupled with the prospect of future criminal investigations  and the deterrent effect such a prospect  may have on individual perpetrators,"  Mr. Darusman's report states.

In a report that takes stock of the United Nations   investigations to date, Mr. Darusman  identifies nine "patterns" of human  rights violations including denial of access to food, arbitrary detention in prison camps estimated to hold up to  200,000 people, and abductions of foreign nationals. Many, if not all, of these  patterns "may amount to crimes  against humanity, committed as part of  systematic and/or widespread attacks  against civilian populations," the report says.

With the information accumulated in  the past eight years, investigators had  reached a tipping point that called for  greater resources to take their research  forward, Mr. Darusman said in a telephone interview. Like other investigators, he  has worked with a single assistant, limiting the possibilities of sustained investigation. A commission of inquiry is  likely to have three members, including Mr. Darusman, supported by researchers and a full-time  secretariat.

Even if an inquiry is commissioned, it  remains unclear how effective it will be, except in political symbolism. North Korea does not allow outside investigators. And the international community has  few means to force Pyongyang to provide access. Despite numerous testimonies by gulag survivors, no outsider has ever had  a glimpse of a prison camp in North Korea.

North Korea has not so far reacted to  the assessment but rejected the General  Assembly resolution in December as a  "political plot" that escalated confrontation. The abuses alleged "cannot be  allowed to exist in our country where  human rights and the fundamental freedom of the people are formally guaranteed by the legal system," said Kim  Song, the North Korean ambassador to  the United Nations.