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The International Coalition to Stop Crimes against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), a group founded by Amnesty International, NKnet and more than 40 other domestic and international human rights organizations, today revealed that it has submitted a new petition to the UN.
The petition calls for the UN Human Rights Council to employ its special procedures mechanism to help shut down the North Korean political prison camp system.
Jared Genser, an international lawyer with a long history of providing legal counsel to international figures including Nelson Mandela, asserted at the event, “The environment in the gulag is horrific, making the suffering of the prisoners one of the most serious human rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.”
Those things called for by ICNK under the petition include; ▲ access to political prison camps for the UN; ▲ investigation of the size and scope of the political prison camp system; ▲ conclusion that the prison camps constitute a crime against humanity; ▲ North Korea to cooperate to provide compensation to victims and families of the dead; ▲ all UN agencies to take what additional action they can to engage North Korea on the issue.
The press conference was also attended by Benedict Rogers, the East Asia region head for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, while Human Rights Watch and officials from the International League for Human Rights are among those who have signed the petition.
