PARLIAMENTARY EARLY DAY MOTION
HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN NORTH KOREA (12 July 2011)

That this House notes the continuing reports of violations of human rights in North Korea, including public executions, infanticide, severe and systematic torture, slave labour, dire living conditions and below subsistence-level food rations in the prison camps, religious persecution, sexual violence and extreme punishments inflicted on North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China; further notes that an estimated 200,000 people are incarcerated within a system of camps known as North Korea's gulags; recalls that the families of prisoners are often punished for guilt by association; further notes the reports of former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Mr Vitit Muntarbhorn, who has described the egregious and endemic human rights situation in the country as dire and desperate; welcomes the former Special Rapporteur's recommendation that the international community should `mobilise the totality of the United Nations to promote and protect human rights in the country [and] support processes which concretise responsibility and accountability for human rights violations, and an end to impunity'; further notes the call made by the European Parliament for the establishment of a United Nations Commission of Inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity; urges the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to abolish its system of prison camps; and calls on the Government to seek the establishment by the United Nations of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate whether these human rights violations amount to crimes against humanity and to recommend further action to bring an end to the suffering in North Korea.

Sponsored by:
Fiona Bruce (Conservative)