The North Korean Problem of Human Rights Violation

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   mbuggiehposted 10 years ago

   
   On 17 February 2014, CNN reports that there is "abundant evidence of crimes against humanity in North Korea". What might be an appropriate response of the United States to this information?
   
   Here is a link to the CNN article:
   http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/17/world/asi … ?hpt=hp_t1

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Complain to the UN.  Write newspaper articles.  Talk to the Pope.
      
      Under no circumstances take any action, including embargo or other "financial war".  We are NOT the world's moral policeman.

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         mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Among the victims of North Korea's crimes against humanity are United States citizens. Does the US government have any obligation to its citizens who have been imprisoned in North Korea?

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            wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Did they violate North Korean law?  If yes, then it is our duty to leave them there.  If no, then it is our duty to get them out.
            
            Understand that there ARE no "crimes against humanity", there are only moral objections to what some people do.  Which those people do not agree with.

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               mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               I strongly disagree with the idea that there are no crimes against humanity, but rather only actions we disagree with. If there is no legal class of "crime against humanity", then the Nuremberg Trials must be nullified and the convictions of those offenses adjudicated there vacated. If there are no crimes against humanity then Nazis active in the extermination of Jews (and others) should have been allowed to simply walk away from the Third Reich without trial or punishment punishment.
               
               I cannot imagine a world in which that would have been, or is now, possible.

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                  wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Will you give anyone and everyone in the world the right to determine what your morals are?  How you should treat your neighbor or child?  How you should live?  Will you institute sharia law in your country?
                  
                  No?  Then you have zero right to tell them how they should live in another country.  It is not your country, it is theirs and you have no ethical or legal right to write their laws for them.

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               rhamsonposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Understand that there ARE no "crimes against humanity", there are only moral objections to what some people do.  Which those people do not agree with.
               
               If you are stating the US belief in withdrawing from the UN Rome Statute of the International Criminal Courts definition of "Crimes Against Humanity" you are correct. But a legal stand based on a definition is not a moral answer to whether this is taking place. The US has selective morals when confronted with the dilemma of capitalist gains as opposed to moral actions against an oppressor. The US invades countries under guises of moral or necessary US interests but the bottom line soon emerges. Iraq with its oil fields, Afghanistan with it's Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline provide the prize for the effort. Maybe this is a good reason why the US won't agree to the accord, Korea offers no such rewards as we don't wish to hassle Chinas friends as we exploit their markets with American technology and trade.
               
               Does that mean that there are not atrocities taking place under Un? He is a chip off the old mans shoulder and the old man showed him how to rule. His Uncle crossed him and the old guy was executed toot sweet. What a great way for a tyrant to establish himself. When you have tyranny there is no defense that can be made for it and the bloodshed resulting from its change has to be earned by those oppressed by it.

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                  mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Whatever.
                  
                  Any opportunity to bash the US and support rogue nations seems to be the order of the day on Hubpages---even if it means supporting a monster who has institutionalized and systematized crimes against humanity; humanity which includes his own people.
                  
                  This is particularly evident when, rather than focus on the fact that the report comes from the United Nations and that the United Nations is seeking a global response---not unilateral response from the US, and commentary turns immediately to the "evil capitalist aggressor" ---the caricature of the US to popular in this environment.

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                     rhamsonposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     It is a reputation well earned. The US has more dirty tricks and installed more dictators and tyrants than we like to mention. There are always exceptions to the rules but why is it the US refuses to join the Rome Statute of the International World Court? Guess who was in the presidency when it was dropped? Clinton, Bush and Obama are under indictment in some countries for war crimes that include torture, unlawful imprisonment and in some cases mass murder. Are they valid charges? We will never know as these leaders do not wish to recognize the Accord. So before you start pointing fingers at others remember there are three more pointing back at you. But I guess you will quickly dismiss this as you did the original post. We in the US have selective reasoning.

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                        mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        Whatever.

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                           rhamsonposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                           Good point!

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                  wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  That seems a terribly difficult concept for some to grasp; that the US (or anyone else) is not the moral leadership and police of the world.  Perhaps it's simply that we have forcibly impressed our ideas of "right" and "wrong" on the world for so long that it is second nature.  Or perhaps it's the "god feeling"; we're superior to everyone else and thus have the right to tell them how to live in their country.
                  
                  Whatever it is, it is eventually going to afoul of someone with bigger guns and the fur will fly.

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                     mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     I think it is my deep connection to St Augustine and his concept of an absolute moral right and an absolute moral wrong coupled with Hugo Grotius' concept of "just war".
                     
                     If we stand by and let the abuse continue we are, as St Augustine and Grotius teach us, parties to the abuse.

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                        wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        St. Augustine.  The one that started the enormous Christian hatred of anything to do with sex?  The one that was instrumental in setting such laws as married couples caught practicing sex outside the missionary position had to be punished?  The one that started the idea of unnatural celibacy for priests that has resulted in so much child abuse?
                        
                        The one that had such a terrible problem with his own sexuality that he decided he had to force the rest of the world to abstain whenever possible, that sex was ONLY for reproduction and then ONLY in a married couple and the rest of the world either capitulated to his tortured mental picture of sex or had to be killed off?
                        
                        That St Augustine is the one you have a deep connection to?  I can understand your insistence that you are morally superior to everyone else, then, and have the right to force your moral code onto others.

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                           mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                           Yes, but if you read ALL of work of St Augustine there is a lot more to him and his work than what is best-described as sex panicked rhetoric.
                           
                           I would encourage you to read St Augustine and Grotius. There is much more to both of them than has been distilled and disseminated in popular culture.

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                              wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                              Any man so twisted and deformed mentally as to promote the ideas on sex that he did, and any man so insistent that everyone joint him in that dark world he created in his own mind is not someone I care to read.
                              
                              As far as I'm concerned, morality comes down to the golden rule; the only moral rule practiced (or at least paid lip service to) world wide and through very nearly all cultures.  Augustine did not take that rule into his life; he trampled it into mush in his madness and preoccupation with sex and as a result he is not a fit model to follow.  IMHO.

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                                 mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                                 Like I said, that is the distilled view of St Augustine.
                                 
                                 But okay, maybe read Hugo Grotius and consider the idea of "just war".

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                                    wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                                    Might take a look at Grotius - does he support leaving people alone or is another "Live your life as I think you should"?
                                    
                                    Augustine - that isn't distilled, it IS the man.  His sexual perversion encompassed all that he was and affected everything he did.  I have no doubt that there some good in the man (there is in everyone), but he is the very root of a great deal of the evil in Christianity.

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                                       mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                                       Grotius focuses on the justification for war and the concept of waging a "just" war. He is particularly focused on appropriate response.

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   mbuggiehposted 10 years ago

   So we just let a monster be a monster. We let him kill his people and rape and starve and brutalize them into submission in ways that have no modern world analogue  because the monster has some "right" to do this that is somehow tied up in national sovereignty?
   
   So, again, do we vacate the Nuremberg convictions?

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Will you become the monster yourself?  Will you set yourself up as the master of the world, enforcing your particular brand of morality onto everyone else, whether they like it or not?
      
      The US has long had a name for being heavy handed and more than happy to use force on others.  Will you continue it?

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         mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         My sense is that there is a global, if not universal morality, that understands the conduct of the North Korean leadership as immoral and as a problem to be solved.
         
         This is not a US problem. This is a global problem. And, a problem that requires intervention.
         
         One need not embrace a particular "brand" of morality peculiar to me or to the United States in order to understand that what is going on in North Korea is wrong and amounts to crimes against humanity.
         
         That said, you still have not answered my Nuremberg Trials question...

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            wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            A global morality.  Including the North Koreans?  Somehow I doubt that.
            
            And no, laws and morality of other countries are NOT a global problem until it affects countries/individuals outside that country.  A far bigger problem is that other countries are of the opinion they have a built in moral right to determine how other people shall live in their own country.
            
            Nuremberg Trials were absolutely justified.  The winners of the war, with the biggest guns, held the trials and punished the people involved.  Is that not how all morality is enforced?  And is it how you WISH it to be enforced? 
            
            Because you seem to have answered the question, if I read you right here.  Your personal morality is more important and takes precedent over that of the people involved.  You have an innate right to determine what morality is, and to enforce your views on all others. 
            
            You don't want it put to the world; you want it put only to people that agree with you!  North Korean leadership, for instance, need not apply for a voice here.  Only those in agreement with what you think it should be.

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               mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               On one point you are right: The North Korean voice---that of a rogue and brutal regime that controls its people and maintains its illegitimate regime with unspeakable systematic and institutional violence, has no voice that I want to hear.

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                  wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  You don't want to hear it as your opinion is better.
                  
                  Is their opinion of how YOU should behave superior to yours?  No?  Then what in the world makes you think yours is superior to theirs, in their own country?  Because you are more moral by your own description than they are?  That works if you have the biggest guns - is that really how you wish to rule the world?

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   PetervandenBergposted 10 years ago

   Indeed, we have no formal right to intervene, because we lack a world government with laws that apply to all people. However, the scope of societies and their government has grown in history from the tribe level to the large nation level today and is still growing. The driving force is that there are some (moral and economic) rules that should be applied to a larger society for the good of all. In this way we develop from 'wilderness' to a better world for all of us. Instead of promoting cultural relativism as wilderness does, we should look for rules we agree on world wide. The event in North Korea give such an occasion.

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