Kirby tells of North Korea atrocities
Image: Michael Kirby said he was shocked by testimony uncovered by the commission of inquiry
Retired High Court justice Michael Kirby has told a Sydney University audience of his personal shock at the revelations made by North Korean defectors during a commission of inquiry he headed into crimes against humanity committed by the outcast regime.
The year-long investigation released its report in February and found evidence of crimes including abduction of foreign nationals, imprisonment and extermination of political opponents, and piracy. Mr Kirby will travel to New York later this month to present the findings to the United Nations.
“In my 34 years as an Australian judge…nothing that I had ever done prepared me for the horrors revealed in the testimony of the North Koreans,” Mr Kirby said on Monday.
The highly-respected former judge said he began the inquiry not knowing a great deal about the secretive state and had a degree of open-mindedness.
“I certainly didn’t believe everything about North Korea that I read in the media.”
But having concluded the investigation Mr Kirby has likened the alleged crimes to those of the Nazis, Khmer Rouge and apartheid South Africa. He told the university audience of political prisoners arrested for seemingly trivial matters and associations, who were then starved and abused in camps where they were forced to eat grass, lizards and rodents to stay alive.
“Contrary to the assertion of North Korea, everything in human rights in North Korea was not good – it was bad. Very bad. And it had to be revealed.”
The inquiry was refused access to North Korea by the tightly-controlled regime, who viewed it as a puppet of the United States. Instead, Mr Kirby and his fellow commissioners received testimony from defectors and refugees in Seoul, Tokyo, London, Washington D.C. and Bangkok.
The case could be referred to the International Criminal Court.
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