Jared Genser in a Public Lecture on Human Rights Atrocities in North Korea

Last week the Human Rights Law Centre and co-host DLA Piper presented a public lecture and discussion with Jared Genser, a leading international criminal law expert, founder of the NGO Freedom Now and current legal council for the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea.

Mr Genser opened the lecture with a series of images, most poignantly an aerial nighttime photograph of the Korean Peninsula. Bright clusters illuminate the south, particularly the capital city of Seoul, a fiery nucleus glowing within a twinkling network of light. In powerful contrast, to the north, just beyond the sharply defined boarder lies North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang. A single bright pinprick in an otherwise black landscape. The darkness suggestive of the power shortages and frequent blackouts common to its inhabitants; the image foreshadowing an intense and enlightening lecture which included an elucidation of the appalling human rights situation in North Korea and how the international community plans to help.

Behind the international focus on North Korea’s nuclear program and missile launches lies an ongoing humanitarian and human rights disaster. Focusing on the atrocious human rights record Mr Genser unpacked some of the specifics, including pervasive famine, political repression, reported torture and extrajudicial murders, and an intricate system of political prison camps reported to be holding 200 000 people.

According to Mr Genser, two current courses of intentional conduct constitute crimes against humanity in North Korea, Food Policy and Famine and the Gulag System.

Food Policy and Famine

• In circumstances of widespread starvation amongst its population, the DPRK Government spends upwards of 15% of its GDP on its military.

• Food aid is limited and is allocated according to levels of loyalty to Pyongyang. The districts furthest from the capital are most in need, yet receive the least aid of all districts due to perceived lower levels of loyalty.

• WFP and NGO workers are severely restricted including the complete prohibition of Korean speaking workers.

• In 42 of the 203 districts no food aid is allowed at all.

• Coping strategies of starving people such as free movement between districts is criminalized.

The Gulag System

• In a regime that could be compared to Nazi Germany, the Gulag system features approximately 200 000 political prisoners in a vast network of prison camps.

• It is believed that there has been over 400 000 deaths including “opponents of the regime” rightly or wrongly labeled, including members of their family and children.

• There are reports of torture for interrogation and punishment in the camps, and prisoners are forced into physically demanding labour while subsisting on starvation level rations.
   

Although the international community has repeatedly failed to address the humanitarian crisis in this region, in 2006 there was a turning point. A report applying a new international security and human rights norm, the ‘Responsibility to Protect doctrine' to crimes against humanity in the region led to the founding of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK). Briefly, the doctrine changes the definition of sovereignty to include,

• a responsibility to protect their own population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and

• the international community’s responsibility to take timely and decisive action to avoid and stop the above when a State is completely failing to protect its populations.

In turn the ICNK has successfully petitioned the United Nations to establish a Commission of Inquiry into Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, a step in the direction of making a shift from rhetoric to action. Although there are no easy answers , the Commission of Inquiry sends a powerful signal that the international community is watching, committed to holding the North Korean Government responsible for its actions and unwilling to give up on the North Korean people.

To read more about the ICNK, click here.

To learn more about the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, click here.

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