Criminal States Protecting Their Proxies at UN

On November 18, the United Nations Third Committee adopted a resolution recommending the referral of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. This was the first time a U.N. resolution recommended sending North Korea to The Hague.

The General Assembly is expected to accept the committee’s report next month and formally pass the matter to the Security Council.

 China and Russia, among the 19 voting against the Third Committee resolution, will undoubtedly use their Security Council vetoes to make sure the ICC does not get an opportunity to hear the case.

South Korea, which has been pushing hard for the ICC referral, is not dismayed by the intransigence of Beijing and Moscow. “This is just the beginning,” said Lee Jung-hoon, South Korea’s human rights ambassador, to the Wall Street Journal. “The fact that the Security Council will discuss this, and talk about Kim Jong Un and the International Criminal Court in one sentence—that’s a huge step forward.”

Lee is right, but a conversation about human rights in North Korea is not complete without talking about Pyongyang’s long-time accomplice. The regime in Pyongyang could not brutalize its population without the active support of its northern neighbor, the People’s Republic of China.

In February, the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry cited China for possibly “aiding and abetting of crimes against humanity” by, among other things, forcibly repatriating refugees to the North.

As Roberta Cohen of the Brookings Institution tells us, the U.N., for the first time, put China “under broad international censure” for the return of refugees. The U.N. report was damning, pointing out, in Cohen’s words, “that over a period of two decades, China has forcibly returned tens of thousands of North Koreans almost all of whom have been subjected to inhuman treatment and punishment in the form of ‘imprisonment, execution, torture, arbitrary detention, deliberate starvation, illegal cavity searches, forced abortions, and other sexual violence.’ ”

Beijing, which said the report was “divorced from reality,” has been blatantly violating its international obligations for years by refusing to consider refugee status for fleeing North Koreans, but neither America nor any other nation was willing to hold China accountable.

Therefore, it is no surprise the Third Committee did not recommend referring the Chinese state to the ICC. No one, it seems, wants to take on a seemingly powerful Beijing, but there is another reason for the failure to enforce norms and rules. In short, there is an enduring hope that Chinese communists will one day become responsible actors. “How many times is China going to veto this down?” South Korea’s Lee asked, referring to the Third Committee’s recommendation. “If China wants to be a world leader with the U.S., it needs to take a moral stance.”

Lee miscomprehends China’s Communist Party, which thinks it can become a world leader without making bows to morality, at least as the concept is understood around the world. The Chinese people are undoubtedly as moral as any other, but the one-party state that rules them has its own imperatives.

One of those imperatives is supporting Pyongyang to the hilt when it comes to refugees. Last Thursday, the lawyer for Peter Hahn, a Korean-American running a Christian charity and school in China just across the Tumen River from North Korea, said the activist had been detained by authorities. Hahn’s detention follows the taking into custody of Kevin and Julie Garratt three months ago in Dandong, along the Yalu River, which also separates the two people’s republics. Both Hahn and the Garratts were aiding refugees fleeing the North.

These detentions are part of an intensified crackdown on aid agencies and networks in border areas, and are a reminder that China’s support for Kim family crimes remains strong—surely a crime against humanity itself.

OG Image: Asia PacificSouth KoreaChinaNorth KoreaHuman Rights