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Written by Jelena
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Tuesday, 29 December 2009 11:42 |
SEOUL, South Korea — A group of activists and North Korean defectors urged an international tribunal Thursday to investigate alleged human rights abuses in the North and put its authoritarian leader Kim Jong Il on trial. The group is to fly to Hague next week to file its petition calling for an investigation at the International Criminal Court, the first such move on the North Korean rights issue, lead activist Ha Tae-keung told reporters in Seoul. "Our aim is to get the arrest warrant on Kim Jong Il to be issued," Ha said. "North Korea's crimes against humanity are no less serious than Sudan's." In March, the court charged Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur — its first action against a sitting head of state.
North Korea has long had one of the world's worst human rights records. The country, however, has dismissed such outside criticism as part of a U.S.-led attempt to overthrow its regime.
A key U.N. committee expressed "very serious concern" last month at widespread reports of rights violation in the North. Pyongyang's immediately rejected it as "a trite political plot hatched by hostile forces against" the North.
"(North Korea) categorically and totally rejects as it did in the past any 'resolution' fabricated by the U.S. and its followers to do harm to the ideology and system" in the country, the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Nov. 20.
North Korea runs at least five large political prison camps, together holding an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 inmates, according to the U.S. State Department. Inmates are forced to toil for more than 10 hours a day, are fed a poor diet and do not receive medical aid, according to former inmates.
"Many people died while serving in prison camps," said Jung Gyoung-il, who served three years in the North's infamous Yodok camp before fleeing the country in 2003. "When people died we weren't sad much as we received an extra bowl of rice for burying them."
Ha said the petition was signed by about 150 North Korean defectors who are all victims of the North's human rights violations.
Ha said ICC officials told him last month that , if a petition is filed, they would consider launching a preliminary examination to determine whether the alleged abuses in North Korea constitute crimes against humanity.
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SEOUL, South Korea — A group of activists and North Korean defectors urged an international tribunal Thursday to investigate alleged human rights abuses in the North and put its authoritarian leader Kim Jong Il on trial.