As North Korea prepares to commemorate the fifth anniversary of former North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il's death on Dec. 17, the world should redouble pressure for action against North Korea's legacy of crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said Dec.16.
As part of the rights watchdog said the U.N. General Assembly should act decisively on its opportunity to condemn these most severe rights violations in North Korea by adopting by consensus a resolution on North Korea human rights.
"Kim Jong-il's rule should be remembered for its sheer brutality, repression, and ruthlessness — and especially for the deaths of millions from his misrule during the years of famine in the mid-1990s," said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch in a statement.
"Rather than honoring Kim Jong-il on the 5th anniversary of his death, the North Korean people should demand that those responsible for crimes under his rule, and crimes that continue under the rule of his son Kim Jong-un, be brought before an international tribunal."
In February 2014, a U.N. Commission of Inquiry found that the North Korean government under the rule of the Kim family committed systematic human right abuses without parallel in the contemporary world, including extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions, and other sexual violence.