March 29, 2024
KCNA Pyongyang Times

Criminal nature of UN’s sanctions measures disclosed

Date: 23/03/2017 | Source: Pyongyang Times | Read original version at source

[2017-03-23]









The Korean Lawyers Committee on March 16 released a white paper to expose the criminal nature of the UN’s “sanctions resolutions” against the DPRK.
The following are the excerpts from it:
The first resolution on sanctions in the UN history is resolution 232 that the UN Security Council adopted on December 16 1966 at the instigation of the US, taking issue with the declaration of independence of former Rhodesia (today's Zimbabwe) as a threat to international peace and security.
Decrying the UNSC for abusing power, experts in international law asserted that the resolution was in breach of Article 2, paragraph 7, of the UN Charter which stipulates that nothing contained in the charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.
Even the drawers of the charter claimed that there is no word “sanctions” in the charter and that they formulated Article 41 concerning non-military measure in anticipation of armed invasion of any country by any other, not for the purpose of imposing economic sanctions against any peaceful state.
This notwithstanding, the US kept manipulating the UNSC to adopt sanctions resolutions one after another with an eye to overthrowing the countries that were disagreeable to it: against Iraq in 1990, Yugoslavia in 1991 and Libya, Cambodia, Somalia, Liberia and Rwanda in 1992.
The UNSC embarked on a scandalous path toeing the US line of hostility toward the DPRK by cooking up resolutions that "legalized" the US war of aggression on the Korean peninsula in the 1950s and the participation of the "UN forces" in the war. In recent years it has gone to extremes in the adoption of sanctions resolutions against the DPRK.
Though the UNSC cites Article 39 as the legal grounds for the resolutions, it is a clause on its general authority.
According to the UN Secretariat’s interpretation of the article, whether any nuclear test, satellite launch and ballistic rocket firing pose threat to international peace and security is determined by the UNSC, not by any norm of international law, and accordingly sanctions resolutions are adopted by the UNSC. If so, why does it make such resolutions against the DPRK alone?
If these had been threat to global peace and security according to the clause, the permanent members of the UNSC, which have conducted more than 2 000 rounds of nuclear tests and launched over 7 000 satellites so far and continue to test-fire intercontinental ballistic missiles almost every day, should have been referred to the UNSC and relevant resolutions should have been adopted.
To forcibly implement the anti-DPRK resolutions they fabricated illegally, the US has mobilized all of its vassal forces and applied political, economic and military pressure on different countries by dint of base and shabby appeasement, deception and blackmail.
The DPRK's nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches are just and legitimate self-defensive measures to safeguard its sovereignty and vital rights from the US nuclear threat persisting for more than half a century and they do not run counter to Article 51 on the right of self-defence of the UN Charter and other international laws.
These sanctions resolutions against the DPRK are also despicable in light of morality.
Not content with applying blockade-type sanctions pursuant to the unlawful and immoral resolutions, the UN is employing such crude methods as including in the list of sanctions amusement and sports facilities and even watch and china rice bowl.
Such acts are more than an action against mankind and modern civilization designed to seriously threaten the Korean people’s right to existence and reverse the present world to the medieval dark ages.
It is a matter of urgency that brooks no further delay to organize a forum of international legal experts to find out the legal grounds of the UN resolutions against the DPRK.
The resolutions are not an issue confined to the DPRK.
In January 2017, the DPRK’s permanent mission to the UN proposed its Secretariat arrange an international forum of law experts in New York or Geneva to investigate their legal grounds, so as to put an end to the unlawful and wicked acts that persist in the UNSC like a customary practice.
But a government-patronized broadcasting agency of the US has let loose a spate of sophistry by quoting laymen who are ignorant of international law. They say the UNSC has authority to keep the DPRK from launching satellite and the latter’s withdrawal from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has failed to be recognized by other countries.
No provision of the UN Charter, however, authorizes the UNSC to deprive any UN member of the right to launch a space probe guaranteed by the space treaty, and no UN member nations have invested the UNSC with such power.
As for the NPT, the DPRK pulled out of it pursuant to its Article 10, paragraph 1, after going through legal procedures, and its withdrawal is not a matter subject to recognition of anyone.
The Secretariat, in accordance with the UN’s basic mission of maintaining international peace and security, should fulfil its responsibility on behalf of the international community by positively responding to the DPRK’s proposal for organizing the forum of legal experts to get answers about the legal grounds of the punitive sanctions.

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