North Korea a ’state of fear’: UN expert

GENEVA - The North Korean government runs a “state of fear” while people are denied sufficient quantities of food, the UN human rights expert on the country said Monday.

Addressing the UN’s Human Rights Council, Vitit Muntarbhorn, an independent special rapporteur, said Pyongyang was running a “distorted” food policy which put the military ahead of ordinary citizens and left many without basic goods.

Aid organizations, including the UN’s own World Food Programme, were also being prevented from functioning, in whole or in part, in North Korea, he told the council.

“The non-democratic nature of the power base has created a pervasive ‘State of Fear’ for the mass base who are not part of the elite,” Muntarbhorn said.

“The national resources are distorted in favour of militarization and the ruling elite,” he added, urging the government to change its “military first” policy to a one of “people first” with appropriate budget allocations.

Muntarbhorn will step down from his role as rights envoy to the North Korea this year, after six years in the role.

Reflecting on his voluntary job since 2004, the expert told reporters in Geneva that “while there has been nominal improvements, substantially, not really”.

“Malnutrition has been predominant for many years,” he noted.

“Children are instrumentalized by the state,” he said, while women’s rights were also abused.

The expert- who was not allowed to visit the country but based his reports on interviews with refugees, diplomats and aid workers - criticized the justice system in North Korea, saying it was subservient to the state. Impunity was rife and capital punishment was regularly used.

The North Korean envoy to the UN in Geneva, Choe Myong Nam, refuted the report.

He said the US, Japan and the European Union were working in “conspiracy, in an attempt to eliminate the North Korea in the pretext of human rights.”

The Human Rights Council should instead focus on Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinians, in addition to racist crimes, said Choe, the envoy of the secretive ruler of Pyongyang, Kim Jung Il.

At the council, the North Korea received some backing from several allies, including Cuba, China and Syria, though Western countries quickly backed the Muntarbhorn report.

Multi-lateral sanctions, some of the allies argued, were responsible for the human rights violations in the North Korea, but Muntarbhorn rejected this outright saying no such restrictions hurt ordinary citizens, but rather targeted the ruling elite.