\n The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on December 10 to discuss human rights violations in North Korea, only the second time that such a session will been held, US diplomats said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The meeting was scheduled after nine council members including Britain and France called for the talks on Pyongyang's dismal rights record.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We intend to convene the Security Council meeting on the situation in the DPRK on Thursday, December 10,\" said Hagar Chemali, spokesperson for the US mission to the United Nations.\n<\/p>\n
\n Last year, the council held the first-ever meeting on North Korea's rights violations despite opposition from China, Pyongyang's ally.\n<\/p>\n
\n China called a procedural vote to block the meeting, but the majority of council members supported the move and the meeting went ahead.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We believe it is critical for the council to continue to shine a light on the abuses in North Korea and speak regularly about the DPRK's human rights situation -- and what we can do to change it -- for as long as the crimes committed there persist,\" US Ambassador Samantha Power said this week.\n<\/p>\n
\n This year's request for a meeting was made by Britain, Chile, France, Jordan, Lithuania, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and the United States, which holds the council presidency this month.\n<\/p>\n
\n It remained unclear whether China would seek again to hold a vote to register its disagreement with the decision to discuss Pyongyang's rights record.\n<\/p>\n
\n A UN General Assembly committee in recent weeks voted by a record majority to condemn gross widespread human rights violations in North Korea.\n<\/p>\n
\n The resolution, which goes to the full assembly for a vote later this month, encourages the Security Council to consider referring Pyongyang to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n Such a move however would likely be blocked by China, which has veto power in the council.\n<\/p>\n
\n International alarm has grown since the release last year of a UN commission of inquiry report which concluded that North Korea was committing rights violations \"without parallel in the contemporary world.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n In his latest report, UN special rapporteur Marzuki Darusman said there had been no improvement in the dire human rights situation over the past year.\n<\/p>\n
\n Pyongyang continues to operate prison camps on a large scale and resorts to widespread use of summary executions, torture and arbitrary detentions to impose a \"near-total denial of human rights,\" he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on December 10 to discuss human rights violations in North Korea, only the second time that such a session will been held, US diplomats said. The meeting was scheduled after nine council members including Britain and France called for the talks on Pyongyang's dismal rights record. \"We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-25035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n