By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/unhr1dprk102209.html
UNITED NATIONS, October 22 -- After six years of reporting on North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn has had enough. He was never allowed into the country, only interviewed refugees who left. At the UN on Thursday, Inner City Press asked him if the UN's refugee agency is defending the rights of those who flee, especially to China.
Muntarbhorn was diplomatic, saying that is UNHCR's job, and that his mandate stops at the border. About the UN Development Program re-opening in Pyongyang, he said that UNDP would not -- as it did in the past -- pay for Kim Jong-il officials' foreign travel and training in the name of development. We'll see.
He described brutal prison conditions, and crackdowns on women who wear pants, leading to rare and courageous demonstrations. Unlike his counterpart on Myanmar Tomas Quintana, he had no problem saying that the money the government gets does not sufficiently go to the people. He said that abductees were not only Japanese, but also from South Korea and elsewhere.
Inner City Press asked Muntarbhorn what the Universal Periodic Review -- described by High Commissioner Navi Pillay as a jewel of the UN's human rights system -- could accomplish.
Muntarbhorn called the UPR "middle pitch," saying there is also a need from some higher pitch name and shame reporting. His successor, he said, will need to study politics as well as human rights. He himself has another job in waiting, he told reporters are the end, without naming it. We wish him well.
