On December 17, 2018, the UN General Assembly Plenary adopted a series of resolutions, many denounced for their double standards, with fierce official statements of protest against the “country-specific” resolutions, the most nefarious and hypocritical of all.
The voting on the morning resolutions is revealing:
Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add2. Draft Resolution VII “Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.
The United States voted “No” against the Resolution. The DPRK voted “Yes,” in support of the Resolution.
Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add.2 Draft Resolution IX: “The Right to Food”
The United States voted “No” against the Resolution. The DPRK voted “Yes,” in support of the Resolution.
Item 74(b) A/73/589/Add.2 Draft Resolution VIII: “Promotion of Peace as a Vital Requirement For the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights By All”:
The United States voted “No,” against the Resolution. The DPRK voted “Yes,” in support of the Resolution
Regarding Draft Resolution XI: “Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Including the Rights to Peaceful Assembly and Freedom of Association,” it is interesting to note that the United States voted “Yes,” despite its history of persecuting the millions of Americans who assembled, peacefully, to oppose the US war against Vietnam, the persecution, murder, destruction of families, and harassment of millions of American citizens for their political beliefs and associations during the infamous McCarthy witch hunts, and the criminal FBI Cointelpro program which secretly assassinated peaceful dissenters from official US Government policy and covertly destroyed the families and lives of others, forcing taxed American citizens to support the murderous regimes of Pinochet, Suharto, Geisel, Castelo-Branco, etc. etc,. whose human rights abuses and atrocities were among the most egregious in human history.
The afternoon of December 17 dramatically exposed the chicanery and double standards of the “country-specific” resolutions adopted by the Third Committee on “Human Rights.” Several nations opposed to these resolutions described the notorious methods by which “developed” countries (the US, UK, etc.) threatened and forced more vulnerable countries to support these resolutions, which were, in reality, a violation of the vulnerable country’s own interests. These threats included cutting funds for development and humanitarian aid to more vulnerable countries, and the weaponizing of food and medicine, which were threatened to be withheld from weaker nations unless they obeyed the commands of the imperial states.
The Resolutions, themselves, and their sponsors would be best described as clowns in a ribald comedy, except that the consequences of the political propaganda the resolutions served resulted in human tragedy, deaths from starvation, deaths from curable diseases, etc., in the nations victimized by this display of crocodile tears in the name of “human rights.”
The climax of absurdity was Japan’s sponsorship of the resolution condemning human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, ignoring the fact that Japan was responsible for the barbaric murder of at least 25 million Chinese citizens during their occupation of China, and had refined biological warfare methods tested on human prisoners, Chinese, Korean and American in their Unit 731, taken over by the United States; Japan had never fully compensated or taken responsibility for the regime of sexual slavery they enforced upon Korean and Chinese women, and the situation remains virulent today. Although it was announced that Resolution A/C.3/73/L.40* was adopted by “consensus,” this was a fraudulent “consensus,” as some of the most powerful and principled member states of the UN disassociated themselves from the “consensus,” and required that their statements explicitly stating their reasons for opposition to the resolution be entered into the permanent verbatim record of the General Assembly.
In the Third Committee, the DPRK could have requested a recorded vote on this Resolution, revealing which countries opposed the resolution, and which supported it. But the DPRK elegantly dismissed the entire travesty of “country-specific” resolutions, thereby trivializing the propaganda abuse of “human rights” and the entire grotesque performance, intended to hoodwink a gullible public.
Russia spoke first, denouncing the country-specific resolutions, opposing, in particular, the one against the DPRK, and emphatically disassociated Russia from any “consensus” on the Resolution.
China next spoke against the “country-specific” resolutions, and again, disassociated China from any “consensus” on the resolution on the “Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Iran delivered a powerful and eloquent address detailing the criminally unethical methods by which the “developed” nations forced submission of the more vulnerable developing nations, compelling them to support the Resolution against the DPRK, and others. Iran disassociated itself, in particular, from any “consensus” on that resolution against the DPRK.
The Syrian Ambassador stated unequivocally that his country opposed the gross hypocrisy, and of course disassociated Syria from the ridiculous “consensus” on the Resolution against the DPRK.
The Cuban delegate stated, unequivocally, that Cuba is disassociated from this preposterous “consensus” on the DPRK resolution.
What kind of “consensus” is this, which is publicly and fiercely opposed by nations whose populations compose more than half of humanity?
The Report on the DPRK was based on the discredited UN “Commission of Inquiry,” headed Michael Kirby, who had never set foot in the DPRK, and made reference to the report by Rapporteur Tomas Quintana, who had also never set foot in the DPRK. (Quintana privately admitted to me that he was well aware that sanctions were deliberately targeting the most vulnerable, and their purpose is “regime change.”) The two reports were based exclusively on the highly paid, lucrative and subsequently acknowledged to be fabrications by defectors, whose incentive to juice-up their slanders with salacious details was heightened by lots of money paid for their “testimony,” (which, was recognized by Assistant Secretary-General Ivan Simonovic as failing to meet the threshold of proof required to be admitted as evidence in a court of law.)
Nevertheless, perpetrations of falsehoods as UN “Human Rights Resolutions” did not trouble the conscience – or lack of intellectual integrity of those sponsors of these resolutions. And with stupefying temerity, Saudi Arabia sponsored the resolution against Syria. This was breathtakingly arrogant: Saudi Arabia condemned journalist Raif Badawi to ten years in prison and 1000 lashes for his writings critical of the Saudi regime; Saudi Arabia is currently embroiled in the criminal investigation of the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Kashoggi, and Saudi Arabia is today responsible for, in the words of Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Mark Lowcock, the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.
The impact of these defamatory resolutions cannot be overlooked: this week the DPRK issued a press release stating:
“ Recently, the U.S. is resorting to anti-DPRK human rights plot in such a way that it carries deliberate provocation by adding high-ranking government officials of the DPRK, a sovereign state, to its unilateral sanctions list, while taking issue with the non-existent “human rights issue.” ….If the high-ranking politicians within the US administration including the State Department had calculated that they could drive us into giving up nuclear weapons by way of increasing the anti-DPRK sanctions and pressure and human rights racket to an unprecedented level, which has nothing to do with confidence building, it will count as greatest miscalculation, and it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever – a result desired by no one.”
