The UN has condemned “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” in North Korea. Hear former High Court judge Michael Kirby speak at UNSW about the political and human rights reality in the rogue state.
Four months after a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations” in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), former High Court judge Michael Kirby will speak at UNSW about the political and human rights reality in the rogue state.
Mr Kirby chairs the UN’s Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK, which delivered a report in March calling for urgent action on abuses including referral to the International Criminal Court. The 400-page report detailed “unspeakable atrocities” including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence as well as the disappearance of citizens and “the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation”.
Mr Kirby has described North Korea as a “dark abyss” and likened the testimony he heard from some 80 witnesses and victims of the regime to “the great scourges of Nazism, apartheid and the Khmer Rouge”.
“The gravity, scale, duration and nature of the unspeakable atrocities committed in the country reveal a totalitarian state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” he said on delivering his findings.
The UN Human Rights Council issued a resolution condemning “in the strongest terms” the violations documented by Kirby. In response, the DPRK regime “categorically and totally” rejected the inquiry’s findings.
"Anyone who reads the report of the UN Commission that Michael Kirby chaired will be stunned by its relentless catalogue of atrocity. This is not normal state authoritarianism in practice, but totalitarianism at the height of its malevolent ambitions," said co-convenor of the lecture, Professor Martin Krygier.
Krygier, who is the Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at UNSW and Co-director of the Network for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law said it is not easy to get information about what goes on in the hermetically closed kingdom.
"It is a signal contribution of this extraordinary report and its extraordinary chairman Michael Kirby to bring these horrors to light, and to suggest ways that their perpetrators might be held accountable."
What: “North Korea, International Law and Political Reality” – an address by Michael Kirby, chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK
When: 6–7.30pm Thursday, 31 July
Where: Law Lecture Theatre G04, Law Building, UNSW Kensington campus.
To register for the public forum, go to the AHRC website.
Media contact: Steve Offner, UNSW Media, 02 9385 1583