North Korea should take urgent steps to improve its ”abysmal” human rights record by providing food to its hungry citizens, a UN envoy said on Friday as he released a scathing report on the reclusive country.
The report noted that almost nine million people in North Korea were suffering from food shortages, with the World Food Programme (WFP) able to reach fewer than two million of the hungry population due to a shortfall in international aid as countries cut funding in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests.
The UN imposed new sanctions on North Korea after it tested a second nuclear device in May, following a first test in 2006.
”I estimate at least a third of the population are in the hunger situation out of the projected 24-million population, said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN rapporteur for North Korea.
Muntarbhorn, a Thai professor who has investigated North Korea for nearly six years but never been allowed entry, was presenting his latest report to the UN general assembly committee that deals with human rights issues.
North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador, Pak Tok Hun, rejected the report, calling it a ”politically conspired document, full of distortion, lies, falsity, devised by hostile forces”.
Muntarbhorn dropped any diplomatic niceties as he rounded on the regime’s treatment of its own people.
”The freedoms from want, from fear, from discrimination, from persecution and from exploitation are regrettably transgressed with impunity by those authorities, in an astonishing setting of abuse after abuse,” Muntarbhorn said in his report.
”They compromise and threaten not only human rights, but also international peace and security.”
He pointed out that while poverty was rife in North Korea, the country itself was endowed with vast mineral resources.
”It is the exploitation of the ordinary people which has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite. This is all the more ironic since it is reported that the economy has improved slightly over the past year, an indication that more resources could be available to help the population,” he said.
Publication of the report comes amid reports of a secret meeting between North and South Korean officials last week in Singapore to discuss a possible summit of Kim Jong-il, the North’s leader, and Lee Myung-bak, the South’s president.
Relations between the two Koreas deteriorated after Lee adopted a tougher line towards the North after taking office early last year. He linked aid for Pyongyang to progress on efforts to end its nuclear programme. In response, Pyongyang suspended reconciliation talks and most of their joint projects.
In recent months, the North has taken a more conciliatory tone, freeing detained South Koreans and pledged to resume joint projects, possibly in response to the effects of the UN sanctions. – guardian.co.uk