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
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