UNSC/DPRK: PROMINENT PANEL PUSHES FOR SECURITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L USUN NEW YORK 002170 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2011 TAGS: PREL PHUM UNSC KN SUBJECT: UNSC/DPRK: PROMINENT PANEL PUSHES FOR SECURITY COUNCIL ACTION ON NORTH KOREA'S HUMAN RIGHTS Classified By: Ambassador John R. Bolton, 1.4 b,d ¶1. (U) Summary. Elie Wiesel, Vaclev Havel and Kjell Bondevik told an audience of UN delegaQand officials that the DPRK had failed to protect its citQs and was systemQally carrying out crimes against humanity. As such, the Security Council had a responsibility to act, under the doctrine of "responsibility to protect", to raise the issue of human rights alongside the nuclear question, and demand specific actions from the Kim Jong Il regime to release political prisoners and improve humanitarian access to the population. Following the briefing, Bondevik called on Ambassador Bolton to press further for Council action. End Summary. ¶2. (U) On November 16, a distinguished panel of human rights advocates called on the Security Council to open a second track on North Korea and pass a resolution to demand improvements in the human rights situation, the release of political prisoners and access for humanitarian groups. Former Czech President Vaclev Havel, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik, told an collection of representatives from UN Missions and the Secretariat, that the DPRK's failure to protect its citizens from the most serious human rights abuses warranted Security Council action under the doctrine of "responsibility to protect." ¶3. (U) The meeting, hosted by the Czech Mission, was organized to promote the recent report, "Failure to Protect: A Call for the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea", that had been commissioned by Havel, Wiesel and Bondevik, and written by the U.S. law firm DLA Piper in conjunction with the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Joining the three sponsors on the podium were Jared Gensler of DLA Piper and Carl Gershmann, President of the National Endowment for Democracy. The full report can be found on the NGO's website (www.hrnk.org). ¶4. (C) The meeting was attended by approximately one hundred representatives of local UN missions, the Secretariat and the media. Czech DPR Hrebickova complained privately that the "Chinese had been very active" in a lobbying effort to convince a number of Permanent Representatives that had previously said they would attend not to show up. In the end, there were a handful of EU PRs present, including the �0A;UK's Jones Parry and Denmark's Loj. African and Asian attendance was sparse. Stopping the nuclear program is not enough -------------- ¶5. (U) In his comments on the report, Havel noted that while the world was focused on the DPRK's nuclear program, stopping the spread of weapons was not enough. The world needed to focus on the behavior of the regime and the "terrible things" that were occurring in North Korea. "We need to help the opposition in this country, based on our own past experience." Bondevik argued that previous differences in how to address North Korea's human rights abuses were now narrowing. There is now a "critical mass in the pragmatic center" who are willing to place progress over strict ideology. The DPRK was "actively perpetrating" crimes against humanity, had limited access by humanitarian organizations and would not engage with UN representatives. Wiesel called Kim Jong Il a "mystery" and said the regime was one of the few remaining dictatorships in the world. ¶6. (U) The primary author of the report, DLA Piper's Jared Genser, briefly highlighted two of the most pressing findings from the report. On the DPRK's food policy, he said that more than a million North Koreans had perished in the famine during the 1990s, while the regime spent seventeen percent of GDP on its military. So severe is the impact of the food shortage on the population that the army needed to reduce its minimum height requirement - to four feet three inches - to ensure that there was an adequate pool of recruits. Meanwhile the regime had 200,000 people in its political prisons, being fed starvation-level rations and subject to widespread torture. More than 400,000 prisoners, he said, had perished in these camps over the past three decades. Bondevik tells Bolton that regional stability is at risk -------------- -------------- ¶7. (U) Bondevik called on Ambassador Bolton later in the afternoon, and pressed for Council action on the DPRK's human rights abuses. Bondevik said that his visit to the DPRK and South Korea ten years ago had made a lasting impression on him. It should be in both China and the ROK's interest to see humanitarian issues addressed aggressively, including through the Council, as the status quo was inevitably going to lead to further instability in the region and increased refugee flows. The Ambassador noted that the U.S. continued to call attention to the issue, and managed to secure a limited reference to humanitarian concerns in the preamble of resolution 1718, but faced "enormous" opposition on the Council, where some see the discussion of the DPRK's human rights abuses as a potential disruption to the Six Party Talks process. ¶8. (U) Bondevik, Havel and Wiesel deserve great credit for their leadership on the human rights issue, the Ambassador said, and should consider increasing their efforts to raise awareness of the problem in the region, and with the South Koreans in particular. Bondevik said that Havel planned to see SYG-elect Ban Ki-Moon on Friday, November 17 to press for a comprehensive approach to the North Korean regime. (Note: Havel was involved in a similar effort last year to seek UNSC action on Burma, when he and Desmond Tutu commissioned a DLA Piper report titled "Threat to the Peace". End Note.) BOLTON