UN Investigator, North Korea Meet Again on Visit

UN Investigator, North Korea Meet Again on Visit

By Cara Anna, Associated Press

29 October 2014

A U.N. human rights investigator met for a second time Wednesday with a North Korean official on a possible groundbreaking visit and the North’s demand that a U.N. effort to refer the country’s situation to the International Criminal Court be dropped.

Marzuki Darusman met with a councilor from the North’s Geneva office. He said nothing was decided but was encouraged that the North is willing to engage. The possibility of Darusman visiting North Korea remains.

His surprise meetings with the North Koreans this week are the first since the special rapporteur’s office was created 10 years ago. A visit would be a breakthrough in global efforts to have a firsthand look at the way the deeply impoverished but nuclear-armed country treats its citizens.

Darusman said he will try to meet again with the European Union and Japan, who have drafted a General Assembly resolution that calls for the U.N. Security Council to refer the North’s dismal human rights situation to the ICC.

The North Koreans “still want this text tinkered with,” he said.

The idea of an ICC referral has made the traditionally reclusive North Koreans nervous enough to embark on a series of gestures to engage with the international community. Darusman has said the North Koreans even floated the possibility of a visit to their country by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

A spokesman for the North Korean mission to the U.N. on Wednesday referred any questions to colleagues, who were not available. Choe Myong Nam, a North Korean foreign ministry official in charge of human rights issues, has said his country is looking for a “new and objective report” on North Korea’s human rights situation.

It was not clear whether the EU ad Japan would be swayed to change the language of their resolution.

A Japanese official has said “our policy is for now unchanged” and that Japan would continue seeking support from U.N. members. An EU spokesperson, however, has not discounted the possibility of addressing the North’s concerns. The officials both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on private discussions by name.

The nonbinding EU-Japan resolution also presses for targeted sanctions. While it doesn’t name names, a U.N. commission of inquiry warned leader Kim Jong Un in a letter earlier this year that he may be held accountable for orchestrating widespread crimes against civilians

The commission of inquiry’s sweeping report early this year, which accused the regime of running political prison camps with up to 120,000 people, started the momentum in the international community to try to hold North Korea and its leaders accountable for crimes against humanity.

Rights groups are watching the North’s recent moves with wariness. While cooperation should be pursued, “it cannot be used to barter away and gut the text of a U.N. resolution based on the COI findings and recommendations for accountability,” Roberta Cohen, co-chair of the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, said in a statement Wednesday.