UN rights group calls for North Korea to be prosecuted before ICC News
UN rights group calls for North Korea to be prosecuted before ICC

The chief investigator from the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Thursday appealed to the UN Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official websites] for alleged crimes against humanity. The call to act came as a result of February’s report [JURIST report] in which the Commission detailed North Korea’s human rights violations, which include murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, the enforced disappearance of people and knowingly causing starvation. The inquiry conducted by the UN concluded that North Korean security chiefs and possibly even Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un should be prosecuted for these crimes. Because North Korea has not joined the international institution, the ICC can only conduct an investigation if the situation is first referred by the UN Security Council. This will likely be made difficult by China, a veto-wielding Security Council member, who already formally dismissed [Reuters reports] the UN’s allegations, citing a lack of evidence.

The UN has sought to investigate and counter alleged human rights abuses in North Korea in the past. The UN Human Rights Council [official website] in March adopted a resolution [JURIST report] urging the UN Security Council to take action against those responsible for documented crimes against humanity in North Korea. In February UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay stated that there can no longer be any excuses for inaction [JURIST report] in North Korea following the release of the UN report. In September the UN Human Rights Commission reported widespread human rights abuses [JURIST report] occurring in the country. Last February Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman and a group of independent human rights experts announced their support for an international inquiry [JURIST report] into human rights violations in North Korea to bring awareness to the country’s system of political prison camps. Also last February Darusman urged the UNHRC and the General Assembly to investigate human rights violations [JURIST report] in North Korea.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.

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