Korean Peninsula: Human Rights

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the dedication and commitment that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, shows in relation to North Korea and to many other issues that we debate in your Lordships’ House.

The issues that we are discussing today certainly demand a more comprehensive, more strategic, more persistent and well co-ordinated response from the European Union, the United States and the United Nations. The door must be firmly open to negotiation and to a serious dialogue that is perceived to be flexible, pragmatic and fair.

I believe that it is time to move away from what amounts to crisis management of North Korea to what has been described as the unavoidable triangle between denuclearisation, diplomatic normalisation and human rights dialogue. Our objective must be to seek agreement to country visits by the UN special rapporteur and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. That would indeed be the progress that we seek.

A decade and a half of food aid has not resulted in food security; nor has energy assistance resulted in economic growth or sustainable development. Continuing with the same approach has meant that the nuclear problem shows no sign of going away; nor does the suffering and misery inflicted on the people of North Korea by such a vindictive and callous regime.

Therefore, can the Minister say whether the Government will press for a European Union troika and/or the high representative to visit North Korea? The last visit was in March 2009, when wide-ranging discussions took place between the EU troika and representatives of the regime in North Korea. Post Lisbon, we should be pressing for more progress and for a troika to go there as urgently as possible.

Also, the European Union should ensure that refugees who seek safety in European Union diplomatic representations should be given every assistance, including transfer to European Union states or to other chosen destinations. The United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Norway have admitted hundreds of North Koreans, and now we need to ask the Government to urge that there be a stronger European commitment to a strategy to implement that as a European Union-wide policy.

As alluded to by other noble Lords, China remains North Korea’s patron and economic lifeline. Turning a blind eye to the transgressions of such an unreliable ally has, for China, been outweighed by the fear that the regime in North Korea could collapse. The Chinese preference is for maintaining the status quo, which is a reason for the European Union and others, as a matter of course, to raise in all discussions with the Chinese our concerns about the situation in North Korea. The UN special rapporteur has described the human rights situation as both egregious and endemic. I believe we can agree with that analysis, which was made by someone who, for his six-year tenure monitoring human rights as an independent expert, has never been allowed any access to North Korea. However, he has described the effects on the people: the food shortages, the public executions, the torture, the arbitrary detention and much more. He has called for North Korea to stop punishing the people in that way, to stop punishing those seeking asylum elsewhere and to institute democratic processes.

Does the Minister agree that an independent, international commission of inquiry, to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred, should be set up and should send a clear message that the international community is prepared to deal with what is occurring in North Korea? If we look at the severity of the abuses of human rights that continue with impunity—that is an important word to use—surely we should now be deducing that what is happening in North Korea amounts to crimes against humanity. We must demand accountability and justice, and we should cite the growing global consensus that perpetrators of such crimes should be held to account individually by the International Criminal Court. The victims need to know that they are not forgotten; they need to know that they are being given recognition and that they can expect justice and compensation.

I draw particular attention to the plight of North Korean women. Of those who flee to China for food, medicines and income for their families, 70 to 80 per cent are young women. Many are taken to China by traffickers, and because of their fear of repatriation they are sold to Chinese men, many of whom have no wives because of the effects of the one-child policy in China. If they are returned to North Korea and are pregnant they are forced to have an abortion. The North Korean authorities do not want half-Chinese babies. For those whose pregnancies are too far along, they are forced to witness the infanticide of their prison-born babies. They are subjected to terrible brutality and sexual humiliation.

I believe that we should focus on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on violence against women and urge the new commissioner responsible for implementing that resolution to look very seriously at what is occurring in North Korea. In any peace and reconciliation process that is proposed, the women of North Korea, who have suffered so terribly, should be part of any initiatives undertaken between North Korea, South Korea, the United States and others.

Until and unless we do something about the challenges that we face from North Korea seriously, conscientiously and urgently, we will stand here for years to come repeating the mantras that we have repeated today about the appalling situation in that country. We have to understand that by focusing on the nuclear issue—as we rightly do—but not focusing on the human rights issue, we are in many ways putting the cart before the horse. We need to look through the paradigm of human rights. That is the only way that we can build the kind of reconciliation, peace and security which the people of North Korea so desperately need. If we do not take that audacious approach, I fear that the process that we are encouraging to bring that peace and reconciliation will continue to stutter and stall.