SW radio "Shiokaze" message for North Korea by Mr. James Hennan

James Hennan, The Head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea the DPRK. From the right in the photo: Mr. Hennen, Tamaji Takeshita (Noriko Furukawa's sister), Keiko Ikushima (Takako Ikushima's sister), Miho Yoshimi (Miwa Akita's sister), and Misa Morimoto (Miho Yamamoto's sister). ----- Hello, my name is James Hennan, and I am the head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or the DPRK. One of the main areas we work on is the area of enforced disappearance. This is where people are taken by the authorities of a state. And then there's been no information given about what happened to them, and even their existence is sometimes denied. It means that these people literally just disappear. This is both a very serious human rights violation, as well as a crime, and in some cases, it's an international crime. And for the families left behind, the trauma is enormous. You don't know what happened to your loved one. You don't know where they are, you don't know if they are well or not, and you don't even know if they are alive or not. Sadly, enforced disappearance happens in quite a few places around the world, including the DPRK. Many, many people have been forcibly disappeared by the DPRK since the Korean Peninsula was divided way back in the 1940s. The group includes those people from the Republic of Korea who were soldiers and were taken as prisoners of war and not returned by the DPRK. They include people who were civilians who were taken by the DPRK during the war and not returned. They include civilians who were kidnapped after the war. And again, not returned, and that has happened for many decades. They also include Japanese nationals who were abducted and taken to the DPRK, never to return. We also have Japanese nationals and Koreans, who were living in Japan, who went to the DPRK under the so-called paradise on Earth campaign, which was conducted over 25 years. Many of those people disappeared when they arrived in the DPRK and have not been heard from since. In addition, there are people from a number of countries who have been allegedly taken by the DPRK and never returned and forcibly disappeared. Those countries include Lebanon, Malaysia, Thailand, France, Singapore, and Romania. In our office, we work on this issue in a number of ways. First, we continue to gather information on those cases of enforced disappearance as well as other possible cases of enforced disappearance by the DPRK. We take this information and we analyze it according to international law, and then we share our conclusions with the government of the DPRK for their comment. We then publish our conclusions to the world at large. We also have a focus on the families of the disappeared because under international law, the families of people who have been forcibly disappeared are also victims, and they have rights. They have victims' rights under international law. They have the right to be recognized as victims, and they have the right to truth and the right to support. We also undertake activities just to try to keep awareness of these many cases of enforced disappearance, to keep this awareness high in the international arena. This is because many of the people who have been forcibly disappeared, many of the people who have been abducted, are now of advanced age. They are elderly. Their families are elderly. Even the people who abducted them, the perpetrators, are now elderly. So with all of these people approaching the end of their lives, we have an obligation to seek some justice or at least some conclusion to these terrible stories for these people before they die. All families need to be reunited with their loved ones or to know what happened to their loved ones. This is the guiding principle of our office.