OTHERS SAY

Your witness

A common illusion held by dictators is that they need only shut the borders, turn off the internet and control television for no one to notice the horrors they commit inside the country. The work of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has demonstrated how wrong they are. The commission has shone a light on one of the world’s human rights sinkholes, North Korea, without ever setting foot there.

Michael Kirby, the retired Australian jurist who heads the commission, delivered an interim report that manages to shock on a topic that has already shocked for some time. The commission’s witnesses provided evidence of systematic and widespread human rights violations, including torture, sexual violence, deliberate starvation, arbitrary detention and more.

Mr. Kirby quite properly invited North Korea to respond to the testimony of witnesses who described grim lives in political prison camps, international abductions, torture and starvation. “Truth is always a defense against accusations of slander,” Mr. Kirby stated. “An ounce of evidence is worth far more than many pounds of baseless attacks.”

North Korea said it “totally and categorically rejects” the commission’s work, and its official news agency denounced testimony before the panel as “slander” put forward by “human scum.” But it provided no facts.

North Korea won’t suddenly throw open its doors and invite more inspection of this dark underside of the world. But the commission has laid down an important record of testimony and human experience.

Editorial, Pages 88 on 09/29/2013

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