Vaclav Havel, Elie Wiesel and Kjell Bondevik (former PM of Norway) have jointly made a public appeal for refocusing on NK’s human-rights crisis, in the NYT. Worth reading, but nothing new.
Seems to me that global opinion-leaders are stuck in a sortta cycle — some will say “we just can’t do anything about NK’s human-rights problems, the regime just doesn’t respond, so let’s focus on their nuclear-weapons problem, try to make some progress there” and then after awhile some others say “we just can’t do anything about NK’s nuclear-weapons problem, the regime just doesn’t respond, so let’s focus on NK’s human-rights problems, try to make some progress there” — and no progress is ever made on either. Not that I have any brilliant policy-solutions either… {sigh}
Sphere: Related Content
6 Comments
That was worth reading, thanks.
“We also urge the incoming secretary-general, Ban Ki-Moon, to make his first official action a briefing of the Security Council on this dire situation.” Don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen.
No, that wouldn’t be a good bet. One has to wonder whether Havel, Wiesel and Bondevik know very much about who Ban Ki-Moon is and the status of contemporary public opinion in South Korea…
There might be one minor “new” angle in that op-ed essay, the idea that the UN has officially declared that governments have the responsibility to protect their citizen’s human and basic-civil rights, as a standard and basis for pressure on North Korea. But since there is no mechanism or even standard for enforcement of this declaration, other than the Security Council which has already made it clear that is unwilling to do anything about NK or any other similar cases… this seems to be just rhetorical.
Given that a few UNSC members have nothing to brag about regarding human rights in their own nations I can’t see them pointing at N.K.’s abuses. You can’t even get the U.S. to back a basic human rights guarantee.
And one of the things hanging behind the cycles of talk between nukes and human rights is ——– that nobody can stomach what CAN BE DONE to deal with both problems at the same time: crush the regime.
We don’t like to admit it —– and by we I mean everybody - left and right —— but we end up accepting the human rights violations and the nukes and the regime that is North Korea, because we don’t want to face the possible costs of squeezing it to a violent death or using violence to kill it.
The suffering of the North Korean people is more palatable….
Well, you’re right about that — it’s because the “possible costs” are indeed so high as to be unaccecptable. Like, having Seoul & Incheon & etc wiped out — that’s an unaccecptably high “possible cost” to me, and it seems, to most South Koreans. Sometimes life is like that…
I have a policy idea, for those bereft of such at the moment. Pressure needs to be placed on the ROK to tie economic assistance to tangible increases in living standards for normal DPRK citizens. Start with Kaesong. Demand for workers the right to take all their pay. Monitor food and other aid. Start demanding that Seoul prop up an ailing despot or the consequences will be felt, in the export sector and in access to raw materials. Comments?