Muhammad Muzahidul Islam :
People of the globe have witnessed that the authoritarian dictators have always been non-tolerant, harsh and selfish.
The only thing they want is to keep them in power and remain in an unparalleled position to dictate others.
In order to do so, the dictators like to see their followers blindly obey their all commands and dictations; does not matter whether the commands are right or wrong, legal or illegal, moral or immoral.
And it does not matter whether their blind obedience poses a threat to peace and stability or commit any gross human rights abuses.
This is how the dictators create a culture where the followers have no time to give their second thoughts how they are contributing to breaching the stability or committing the gross human rights abuses against the innocent individuals.
Do the followers know that they cannot escape their individual liability for observance of the command of perpetration?
If I am allowed to pick one from the list of most notorious authoritarian regimes as a worst example, I would choose North Korea.
People’s civil rights have never been respected in North Korea.
People are far away from the enjoyment of political and democratic rights, and the fruits of rule of law.
People cannot dream to put them in an equal democratic political competition to be the supreme leader of the government of North Korea.
If you blindly obey the commands of the regime disregarding the status of the command whether it is right or wrong, you are safe domestically, and if not, you are vanished.
Purging of rivals is not any new in North Korea. Jang, the uncle of Kim Jong Un was executed in 2013.
According to Wikipedia “On 12 December 2013, Jang was tried by a special secret military tribunal of the Ministry of State Security and executed by firing squad,according to state media”.
Wikipedia further states that “Analysts of North Korean politics agreed that Jang’s execution was the most significant since purges carried out in the late 1950s by Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather and North Korea’s founder; since 1960, purged top officials have not usually been killed, and the denunciations of purged figures have not typically been so extreme and public.
Professor Charles K. Armstrong, an expert on North Korea at Columbia University, stated that “although high-ranking leaders, including members of the Kim family, have been deposed before, we haven’t seen anything this public or dramatic since Kim Jong-un’s grandfather Kim Il-sung purged his last major rivals in the late 1950s.
This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought.
“Former U.S. National Security Council director for Asian affairs Victor Cha said that the purge and execution of Jang “tells you that everything’s not normal … When you take out Jang, you’re not taking out just one person – you’re taking out scores if not hundreds of other people in the system. It’s got to have some ripple effect”.
The supreme leader of the North Korean regime and the leaderships that follow him should be treated equally in the eye of law.
They may enjoy some immunity in the national or domestic levels.
However, according to the judgment of International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Congo v. Belgium (2002)case the immunities do not present a bar to prosecution when an incumbent or former official is subject to the jurisdiction of an international criminal court.
I would quote the relevant portion from paragraph 61 of the judgment of the said case.
It was stated in paragraph 61 that… “Fourthly, an incumbent or former Minister for Foreign Affairs may be subject to criminal proceedings before certain international criminal courts, where they have jurisdiction.
Examples include the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established pursuant to Security Council resolutions under Chapter VI1 of the United Nations Charter, and the future International Criminal Court created by the 1998 Rome Convention.
The latter’s Statute expressly provides, in Article 27, paragraph 2, that “[i]mmunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person”.
Let me share some relevant provisions from the Rome Statute on individual criminal responsibility.
Article 25 (1) provides that “The Court shall have jurisdiction over natural persons pursuant to this Statute”.
Article 25(2) provides that “A person who commits a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court shall be individually responsible and liable for punishment in accordance with this Statute”.
One could mention here a number of international mechanisms by which the perpetrators could be held accountable.
For example, despite the fact that North Korea is not a party to the Rome statute, North Korean perpetrators may be referred to the ICC through the UN Security Council.
UN Security Council has also power to establish a special tribunal to try the perpetrators. In addition, under article 41 of the UN Charter the UN Security Council is mandated to impose sanctions against the perpetrators.
Finally, considering the risks of individual criminal liabilities of the perpetrators, one would ask them to sever or refrain themselves from the acts of perpetration.
Because, international community is closely monitoring the situations in North Korea.
The leaderships that support, assist and follow the supreme leader of the regime in undermining and abusing the human rights in North Korea should give their second thoughts to the risks that follow.
(The writer is a Barrister-at-Law, Human Rights Activist and an Advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh).