No One in Recent History Deserves A War Crimes Indictment more than Kim Jon-Un
In the endless guessing game about what really goes in the court of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, two questions are causing even more intrigue than normal. The first is whether the portly Mr Kim has had to have surgery on his feet, the result of tottering around in Cuban heels designed to boost his height. And the second is whether those same feet are now are now quaking in their boots at the prospect of being referred to the International Criminal Court.
As The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, the human rights committee of United Nations general assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a move to have Mr Kim investigated by the Hague for crimes against humanity. The move follows February's UN report into Pyongyang's appalling human rights record, in which the author, the Australian judge Michael Kirby, likened the regime variously to the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge and Russia under Stalin.
Unlike some more excitable UN functionaries, who are fond of hurling similar insults at Israel and America, Judge Kirby backed up his claims with cold and chillingly sombre research. He spent much of 2013 hosting a roving UN inquiry panel that held evidence-taking sessions from North Korean expats in London, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo - everywhere, in fact, except Pyongyang, where they were refused entry.
The result of this gruesome human rights roadshow was a 372 page report - the length of a medium-sized horror novel - which detailed everything from torture and slavery through to mass murder in prison camps, where bodies are routinely burned and the ash used as fertiliser.
Indeed, when I spoke to Mr Kirby on the eve of Tuesday's UN vote, he told me: "These images reminded me of what awaited General Eisenhower and General Montgomery when they arrived at the camps in occupied Europe in 1945."
Of course, we knew much of this already. All Mr Kirby's report did was compile it into a single, detailed dossier - intended, as he puts it, to ensure that the world could never again say it didn't know what was going on, as some nations did after Auschwitz. Mr Kirby even took the trouble of writing directly to Kim Jong-un himself, politely requesting him to take "all reasonable and necessary measures" to stop such horrors, although he says has yet to receive a reply.
The reason being, sadly, that Kim Jong-un himself knows that it is very unlikely that he will ever find himself at the Hague, or even named in an indictment. For while Tuesday's UN vote was backed by 111 votes to 19 against, the final say will be with the UN security council, where North Korea's old friend, China, and possibly also Russia, will almost certainly veto any ICC referral. North Korea's behaviour has tested even Beijing's patience in recent years, but allies are still allies, and besides, like every other country with a dubious human rights record itself, China is reluctant to encourage the ICC to cast stones that might one day come its way too.
Judge Michael Kirby was ofen reduced to tears by tales of North Korean atrocities
This, of course, is simply business as usual in terms of the realpolitik of international diplomacy: the self-interest of nations like China and Russia on the UN security council are two good reasons why the UN is often powerless to stop atrocities in different parts of the world, and why US-led coalitions often choose to act alone. But the case of North Korea demonstrates it particularly starkly. As Mr Kirby, who was sometimes reduced to tears by what he heard during his inquiry, puts it: "If North Korea is not, objectively, a case for referral to the prosecutor at the ICC, it is hard to imagine a case that would be."
Still, while the report's author may clearly end up disappointed, the world' other remaining Stalinist-throwback nations will see it as a strategic victory. Before Tuesday's vote at the UN even got underway, there was a separate motion to de-fang the resolution by Cuba, which wanted it replaced by an anodyne statement that simply encouraged more dialogue with Pyongyang, and omitted all mention of prosecutions. As Mr Kirby points out, this is the same Cuba that another inquiry found had supplied weapons to a North Korean boat that was stopped in the Panama Canal in July 2013, in breach of a global arms embargo on Pyongyang. So no conflict of interests there then.
Still, North Korea isn't the only country that Cuba has been extending the hand of friendship too recently. Only last month, Hugo Swire, a junior foreign office minister, became the first British government minister to visit Havana in nearly ten years, discussing trade and investment and Cuba's contribution of some 250 doctors to fight Ebola alongside British medics in Sierra Leone.
Yes, of course, human rights were also raised - alongside the cause of gays, lesbian and trans-sexuals, who are apparently a cause close to the heart of Raoul Castro's daughter, Mariela. But on the matter of getting Kim Jong-un that bit closer to the ICC, where he very clearly belongs, the meeting clearly produced little progress. Small wonder that Kim Jong-un has never felt the need to write back to Mr Kirby.
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