North Korea Urged to Release All Abductees

The Kyodo News Service reported on April 14^th that the U.N. Human Rights Commission urges N. Korea to free abductees;

(Kyodo) _ The U.N. Human Rights Commission urged North Korea on Thursday to immediately release all foreign nationals it has kidnapped, calling the abductions "a grave violation of human rights."

The commission made the call in a resolution it adopted the same day. Japan and the European Union jointly sponsored the draft resolution.

The commission urged North Korea to resolve "clearly, and transparently and urgently, all the unresolved questions relating to the abduction of foreigners in the form of an enforced disappearance," the resolution said.

It demanded that North Korea ensure "the immediate return of abductees."

The commission decided to extend the mandate of the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, Thai scholar Vitit Muntarbhorn, for one year beyond Friday.

Muntarbhorn scrambled to gather information about the human rights situation in North Korea through interviews in various countries, including Japan, since being appointed to the post in July. North Korea has not allowed him to visit the country.

The resolution said other U.N. bodies, in particular the U.N. General Assembly, should "take up the question of human rights" in North Korea if it "does not extend cooperation to the special rapporteur and improvement of the situation of human rights in the country is not observed."

Japan has said North Korea abducted at least 15 Japanese citizens in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but 10 of the 15 are still unaccounted for.

The remaining five returned to Japan in 2002 and their families including North Korea-born children came to Japan in 2004.

North Korea has said eight of the 10 died and the remaining two has never entered its soil, an assertion Japan does not accept citing a lack of trustworthy evidence.

I hope the U.N. Human Rights Commission remembers the 486 South Koreans who have been abducted by that monstrous freak Kim Jong Il. These are mostly fishermen that were taken in international waters. Some were members of airline crews plus a few that were just taken from South Korea.

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