UN Security Council to hold first open meeting on North Korea human rights situation since 2017

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council will hold its first open meeting on North Korea’s dire human rights situation since 2017 next week. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters that U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk and Elizabeth Salmon, the U.N. independent investigator on human rights in the reclusive northeast Asia country, will brief council members at the Aug. 17 meeting. She said: “We know the government’s human rights abuses and violations facilitate the advancement of its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles program.” Thomas-Greenfield said the council “must address the horrors, the abuses and crimes being perpetrated” by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s regime against its own people as well as the people of Japan and South Korea.