Yesterday ahead of President Trump's meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, NBC News reported the issue of human rights would not be discussed at the summit as an issue.
U.S. won't bring up human rights at North Korea summit, two administration officials say. https://t.co/01Rkpik6Nb
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 11, 2018
But it turns out, the issue was discussed and will be again in the future.
"It was discussed. It will be discussed more in the future -- human rights," Trump said. "It was discussed. It was discussed relatively briefly compared to denuclearization. Well, obviously, that’s where we started and where we ended. But they will be doing things, and I think he wants to do things."
North Korea's human rights abuses are the worst in the world, as detailed by a 2014 United Nations investigation.
"Inmates are imprisoned, usually for life, in camps without ever having been brought before a judge... They have never been charged, convicted or sentenced... [Many] are incarcerated based solely on the principle of guilt by family association. Some are even born prisoners."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"The living conditions in the political prison camps are calculated to bring about mass deaths. Forced to carry out grueling labour, inmates are provided food rations that are so insufficient that many inmates starve to death."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"The death toll is further exacerbated by executions, deaths from torture, the
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
denial of adequate medical care, high incidence of work accidents, lack of shelter and lack of appropriate clothes... the camps have the objective of
gradually eliminating the camp population."
"The intentional killings... through summary executions, beatings, infanticide, deliberate starvation and other illegal means, all amount to the crime of murder... The prisoners are often so weakened from malnourishment and disease that they are literally worked to death."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"Rape is regularly committed in the political prison camps of the DPRK. They are a product of the environment of the prison camps and the impunity generally enjoyed by camp officials... In other cases, women are pressed into 'consensual' sexual relations."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"The imposition of forced abortions on female inmates who become pregnant without authorization not only results in immediate physically harm, it also interferes with the victim’s reproductive rights and causes severe emotional suffering."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"Hundreds of thousands of inmates have been exterminated in political prison camps and other places over a span of more than five decades... This raises the question of whether genocide or an international crime akin to it has been committed."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
"During the period of famine, ideological indoctrination was used in order to
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
maintain the regime, at the cost of seriously aggravating hunger and starvation... It also delayed international assistance that, provided earlier, could have saved many lives."
During the State of the Union, President Trump highlighted the story of Ji Seong-ho, who escaped from a North Korean labor camp."These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution... the forcible transfer [and] the enforced disappearance of persons and... knowingly causing prolonged starvation."
— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) June 12, 2018
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