Mr Kirby didn't mince his words as he described testimony from eighty survivors of the Korean extermination camps, which currently hold at least 120,000 prisoners. He included an account of a woman forced to drown her own baby, children imprisoned from birth and starved, a seven year old girl beaten to death for hiding a few bits of grain, and a whole family tortured for watching a foreign soap opera.
He described a state ruled by institutionalised terror and compared it to Nazi Germany. A panel of experts mandated by the UN's Human Rights Council who published a 372 page report, said North Koreans were suffering 'unspeakable atrocities,' and that those responsible, including leader Kim Jong-un, must face justice.
Kirby, his Australian voice aching with moral authority, exhorted the international community to act on this evidence of crimes against humanity, and pointed out that this time, unlike the Nazi era, no one can say that they didn't know the truth about the abductions, public executions, torture, and political repression.
'There is no excuse for looking the other way,' he said.
We might look straight at his evidence, but who is going to do anything about it? China supports the evil regime, but even if they didn't it is unlikely that anyone would insist on putting an end to the detestable Jong-un. Perhaps because of Tony Blair's adventures and the war in Afghanistan, no one has an appetite for foreign adventures anymore. The international community is now too fearful, selfish and cynical to want to go to war for any cause, unless personally threatened. Jong-un would have to launch a nuclear attack against his neighbours to incite international action against him. In the same way, considering the large 'Peace' movement after 1918, it seems unlikely that if Hitler had not made the mistake of going to war against powerful nation states, he might well have won his other war against the Jews.
Would anyone have entered a war against Germany just to protect the Jews? People sometimes asked that question then when they questioned exactly what they were fighting for, and it's still a question which demands an answer. The news about the situation in the Korean concentration camps was way down the news order on the BBC last night, only just above the BAFTA awards. Korea is a remote communist state and although even the Left must be appalled by it, Korean guards making a mother drown her baby isn't as news worthy as US soldiers making prisoners stand blindfold on boxes or being mocked by females in Abu Graib prison (the latter were headline news for weeks on the BBC). Just as in the 1930's we cannot agree on what is worth fighting for, and have no idea what it would take to get the so called international community to intervene. Tweet
