I am grateful to the Minister, because that was precisely the basis on which I was going to touch briefly on this subject. Although nuclear weapons are in many respects a separate issue from human rights, one cannot divorce the two completely, not least because North Korea and its regime have far more pressing concerns than developing a nuclear capacity, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham and others said.
Other hon. Members spoke at some length about the violations of human rights in North Korea. I do not wish to repeat everything that they have said, but it is worth momentarily dwelling on some of those violations. There is no freedom of the press in North Korea, which is a situation familiar to many millions of people the world over. However, as in other regards, the North Korean situation is particularly extreme. All televisions and radios are fixed so that they can show only state channels. There is an oppressive desire on the part of the regime to ensure that nobody is able to adjust his transmitter in any way to receive any other message. The point was made earlier in this debate that it is hard to know what is happening in a country. We are often frustrated here about inaccuracies in the media. In fact, however, we owe them a debt. One forgets how little one would know without the information that comes from the media. It is difficult for people in North Korea to have a sense of the regime under which they live when the only contact that they are able to have is by word of mouth with people immediately around them. Even then, they have to be extremely cautious about whom they speak to and on what terms.
The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) spoke eloquently and passionately about the absence of religious freedom, and the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) made the excellent and strong point that we should all be concerned by the oppression of minorities, even if we are not ourselves members of those minorities. Others have also spoken at great length about systems of detention, the conditions in prisons, torture, and the use of the death penalty, including in public places.
The situation is as bad as that anywhere in the world. It should cause all of us great concern. However, some would say that, in some circumstances, one can trade off human rights for an efficient, well run state. I do not agree, but I can see the point. An interesting moral question is arising in countries such as China, where we are embarking on an experiment in economic liberalisation while there is, in many regards, an absence of political liberalisation. The improvement in the living standards of many people in China is not yet accompanied by the quality of life in other respects that we take for granted in western countries. That is not the case in North Korea. There is no trade-off. Not only is the situation, in terms of human rights and civil liberties, atrocious by anybody’s standards, but the living standards and economic well-being of the people of North Korea—I hesitate to call them citizens, on the basis that they enjoy no benefits of citizenship—are also woeful.
One can attribute the levels of hunger there partly to deliberate political malice or to incompetent administration. However, as I understand it, of the 24 million or so people who live in North Korea, roughly half do not have enough food—that is a failed state by any standards—and approximately a third are malnourished by the criteria that are used by international agencies to measure shortage of food. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham mentioned, in the late 1990s, approximately—we are likely never to know an exact number—1 million people died in the famine in North Korea. We are considering a country with an appalling human rights record and an appalling economic record, which ought to give us great cause for concern.
I want to touch on four matters that I hope the Minister will address. Perhaps they will point the way forward in some way. The great difficulty that we have is that we can all regret, or even express fury at, the absence of human rights, but it is always easier to talk about that than it is to do anything about it. In that respect, one has sympathy with the Minister and the officials at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The first matter is the United Nations, which the Minister mentioned in his opening remarks. It struck me, which is why I intervened at the time, as absolutely extraordinary that 21 countries were less than emphatic in their condemnation of the North Korean Government. I was not previously aware of that figure.
It seems to me that as a basic starting point we have to try to ensure that there is as much consensus, preferably unanimity, in the international community as possible. The regime should be confronted in every single way with its own despotic tendencies. If we cannot even get other countries to agree to that proposition, we have a long way to travel. It puts us in a difficult, invidious position if we are seen as western countries preaching our values to countries in Asia or elsewhere. We must be cautious to avoid that trap and to make it evident to North Koreans and others that such values are universal and not solely western European or north American.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Human Rights)
Proceeding contribution from
Jeremy Browne
(Liberal Democrat)
in the House of Commons on Thursday, 22 June 2006.
It occurred during Adjournment debate on Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Human Rights).
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
447 c529-30WH 
Session
2005-06
Chamber / Committee
Westminster Hall
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2023-12-05 22:43:03 +0000
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