January 07, 2015

UN takes steps to bring Kim Jong-Un to International Criminal Court

editor:	Neelo Aysha Scholz

As plans for Kim Jong-Un’s birthday celebrations for Jan 8 are underway, the UN is taking steps to bring him to the ICC for crimes against humanity.

There was hope that Kim Jong-Un, the dynastic supreme leader of North Korea, would temper the repressive regime of his father and grandfather when he came into power three years ago. After all, he once studied in Switzerland. That hope is well and truly buried now, with the release of a UN inquiry commission's findings.

“Kim Jong-Un picked up where his father and grandfather left off, continuing to rule based on repression and fear,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Human Rights Watch Asia director.

Public executions take place regularly for vague national security crimes, including “crimes against the state” and “crimes against the people,” as well as a range of nonviolent offences such as fraud and smuggling if the authorities deem the offence as “extremely serious.”

In February 2014, the inquiry body established by the Human Rights Council found the North Korean government has committed systematic human right abuses on a scale and gravity without parallel in the contemporary world. Abuses include extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence.

Two UN resolutions passed this year call for the Security Council to take action to ensure accountability for successive governments in North Korea, possibly by referring North Korean leaders to the ICC.

"These systematic and pervasive human rights abuses are now, finally, at the center stage of the international community’s agenda for action.” Robertson said in a report by Human Rights Watch.

Image: Shows a drawing of torture scenes by an inmate in a political prison camp. Source: UN/AlJazeera