Human Rights (North Korea)

Debate between Andrew Smith and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, as you are one of the few Members of Parliament to have visited North Korea.

North Korea is arguably the world’s most closed nation, with the worst human rights record. Looking through all 30 articles of the universal declaration of human rights, it is difficult to identify any of them that have been implemented and respected in North Korea. Almost all are severely repressed or denied. Indeed, the former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea has described the country as “sui generis”—in a category of its own.

For those reasons, debates such as this are long overdue. For too long—more than 60 years—what amounts to the world’s worst human rights crisis has also been its most overlooked. Why has the appalling inhumanity in North Korea not generated the same headlines or provoked the same mass public outrage as apartheid in South Africa? I hope that young people in our universities and elsewhere will take the issue to heart, as they did apartheid. When I was at the university of Oxford the week before last, I talked to students about it, and I encourage colleagues to do the same when they visit universities and colleges.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this enormously important debate. What he wishes is actually starting to happen. Students from Oxford have come to see me, and one important point that they made is that if we could get the BBC World Service to broadcast to Korea in Korean, its reputation for impartiality would be an enormous force for good.

[Andrew Selous]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I will say more about the BBC World Service and broadcasting in general in North Korea later in my remarks. I welcome his support and intervention.

On 17 February this year, the UN commission of inquiry on human rights in North Korea published its report, concluding that North Korea’s brutal regime is committing a wide range of crimes against humanity, arising from

“policies established at the highest level of State”.

Such crimes against humanity include,

“extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”.

That is a pretty appalling list.

Among the reported abuses, the inquiry found that pregnant women are starved, while their babies are fed rats and snakes. More than 100,000 people—I think the Government estimate up to 200,000 people—are in gulags, which have existed for more than 60 years. There is systematic torture; everyone is forced to inform on each other; entire communities are denied adequate food; and the bodies of the dead are burned and then used for fertiliser.

When pregnant North Korean women are forced to return to North Korea from China—a serious issue in itself—they are subjected to forced abortions if it is suspected that the father of the child is Chinese. If the baby is born, it is killed. Widespread forced abortion and infanticide for purely racial reasons are just two of the brutal regime’s many barbaric acts.

The UN’s 400-page report, based on many hours of extensive first-hand testimony from victims and witnesses, details what it describes as “unspeakable atrocities”.