Tag Archives: Linda Thomas-Greenfield

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Kim’s sister warns US of ‘a more fatal security crisis’

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned the United States on Tuesday that it would face “a more fatal security crisis” as Washington pushes for U.N. condemnation of the North’s recent intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Kim Yo Jong’s warning came hours after U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council that the U.S. will circulate a proposed presidential statement condemning North Korea’s banned missile launches and other destabilizing activities. After the meeting, Thomas-Greenfield also read a statement by 14 countries which supported action to limit North Korea’s advancement of its weapons programs.

Kim Yo Jong, who is widely considered North Korea’s second most powerful person after her brother, lambasted the United States for issuing what she called “a disgusting joint statement together with such rabbles as Britain, France, Australia, Japan and South Korea.”

Kim compared the United States to “a barking dog seized with fear.” She said North Korea would consider the U.S.-led statement “a wanton violation of our sovereignty and a grave political provocation.”

“The U.S. should be mindful that no matter how desperately it may seek to disarm (North Korea), it can never deprive (North Korea) of its right to self-defense and that the more hell-bent it gets on the anti-(North Korea) acts, it will face a more fatal security crisis,” she said in a statement carried by state media.

Monday’s U.N. Security Council meeting was convened in response to North Korea’s ICBM launch on Friday, which was part of a provocative run of missile tests this year that experts say is designed to modernize its nuclear arsenal and increase its leverage in future diplomacy. Friday’s test involved its most powerful Hwasong-17 missile, and some experts say the successful steep-angle launch proved its potential to strike anywhere in the U.S. mainland if it’s fired at a standard trajectory.

During the Security Council meeting, the United States and its allies strongly criticized the ICBM launch and called for action to limit North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. But Russia and China, both veto-wielding members of the Security Council, opposed any new pressure and sanctions on North Korea. In May, the two countries vetoed a U.S.-led attempt to toughen sanctions on North Korea over its earlier ballistic missile tests, which are prohibited by U.N. Security Council resolutions.

North Korea has said its testing activities are legitimate exercises of its right to self-defense in response to regular military drills between the United States and South Korea which it views as an invasion rehearsal. Washington and Seoul officials say the exercises are defensive in nature.

Kim Yo Jong said the fact that North Korea’s ICBM launch was discussed at the Security Council is “evidently the application of double-standards” by the U.N. body because it “turned blind eyes” to the U.S.-South Korean military drills. She said North Korea won’t tolerate any attempt to undermine its right to self-defense and will take “the toughest counteraction to the last” to protect its national security.

On Monday, North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, called U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “a puppet of the United States.”

There are concerns that North Korea may soon conduct its first nuclear test in five years.

The status of North Korea’s nuclear capability remains shrouded in secrecy. Some analysts say North Korea already has nuclear-armed missiles that can strike both the U.S. mainland and its allies South Korea and Japan, but others say the North is still years away from possessing such missiles.

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US: Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians forced to Russia

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.S. said Wednesday it has evidence that “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainian citizens have been interrogated, detained and forcibly deported to Russia in “a series of horrors” overseen by officials from Russia’s presidency.

Russia immediately dismissed the allegation as “fantasy,” calling it the latest invention in a Western disinformation campaign.

The charge came during a Security Council meeting called by the United States and Albania to discuss Russia’s “filtration operations.”

That involves Ukrainians voluntarily fleeing the war in their homeland and those forcibly being moved to Russia passing through a series of “filtration points” where treatment allegedly ranges from interrogations, data collection and strip searches to being yanked aside, tortured, sent to a detention center in Russia and never seen again.

US. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said estimates from a variety of sources, including the Russian government, indicate that Russian authorities have interrogated, detained and forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians. She said they are sent to Russia, often to isolated regions in its far eastern regions.

“These operations aim to identify individuals Russia deems insufficiently compliant or compatible to its control,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “And there is mounting and credible evidence that those considered threatening to Russian control because of perceived pro-Ukrainian leanings are `disappeared’ or further detained.”

Russia’s presidency is not only coordinating filtration operations but is providing lists of Ukrainians to be targeted for filtration, she added.

She said estimates indicate thousands of children have been subject to filtration, “some separated from their families and taken from orphanages before being put up for adoption in Russia.” According to U.S. information, “more than 1,800 children were transferred from Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine to Russia” just in July, she said.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, accused the West of trying to besmirch his country.

He said more than 3.7 million Ukrainians, including 600,000 children, have gone to Russia or Russian-controlled separatist areas in eastern Ukraine, but they “aren’t being kept in prisons.”

“They are living freely and voluntarily in Russia, and nobody is preventing them from moving or preventing them leaving the country,” he said.

Nebenzia said those Ukrainians went through “a registration rather than filtration procedure” similar to that for Ukrainian refugees in Poland and other countries in the European Union.

He said that since “we’ve wasted time talking about the latest conjectures and fantasies” Wednesday, Russia is proposing that the Security Council hold a meeting Thursday “on real threats to international peace and security caused by the supply by foreign states of arms and military goods to Ukraine.”

French Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere, the current council president, scheduled the meeting for Thursday afternoon.

It will be the third consecutive Security Council meeting on Ukraine. On Tuesday, the council held a meeting at Russia’s request to hear about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeastern Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the facility and threatening a possible nuclear catastrophe.

Thomas-Greenfield said the United States knew Russia would deny using filtration, “but there’s a simple way to know if any of this is true.”

“Let the United Nations in,” she told Nebenzia and other council members. “Give the independent observers access. Give NGOs access. Allow humanitarian access. Let the world see what Is going on.”

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo called for investigations of the “extremely disturbing” and persistent allegations “of forced displacement, deportation and so-called `filtration camps’ run by the Russian Federation and affiliated local forces.”

She called for U.N. access to Ukrainians living in Russian-controlled areas and reiterated that the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine “must have unimpeded access to all individuals detained in relation to the ongoing war.”

“This includes access to places of internment of Ukrainian prisoners of war and detainees in the Russian Federation,” she said. “Both sides to the conflict must fully abide with their obligations under international law.”

Ilze Brands Kehris, the U.N. assistant secretary-general for human rights, urged Russia to provide her Geneva-based office access to all places of detention. She added that any adoptions of Ukrainian children in Russia would violate the Geneva Convention prohibiting the change of a child’s personal status including its nationality.

Kehris said the U.N. human rights office “has verified” that Russian armed forces and affiliated armed groups subject civilians to “filtration” security checks, which according to credible reports it received result in numerous human rights violations, including the rights to liberty, personal security and privacy.

The human rights office has documented that Russian troops and their affiliates subject Ukrainians to body searches that sometimes include nudity, interrogations about their personal background, family ties, political views and allegiances, and examinations of mobile devices, Kehris said.

The office has also documented that men and women perceived to having ties to Ukraine’s military or government, or as having pro-Ukrainian or anti-Russian views “were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment and forced-disappearance” and were transferred to penal colonies, Kehris said.

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US and Russia clash over cause of food price rises

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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is accusing Russia of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere even worse by invading Ukraine

14 April 2022, 22:39

3 min read

UNTED NATIONS — The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia on Thursday of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere even worse by invading Ukraine, calling it “just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia’s unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world’s most vulnerable.”

Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen that the World Food Program identified the Arab world’s poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine.

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky shot back saying: “The main factor for instability and the source of the problem today is not the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, but sanctions measures imposed on our country seeking to cut off any supplies from Russia and the supply chain, apart from those supplies that those countries in the West need, in other words energy.”

“If you really want to help the world avoid a food crisis you should lift the sanctions that you yourselves imposed, your sanctions of choice indeed, and poor countries will immediately feel the difference,” he said. “And if you’re not prepared to do that, then don’t get involved in demagoguery, and don’t mislead everybody.”

The sharp exchange took place a day after a U.N. task force warned that the war threatens to devastate the economies of many developing countries that are now facing even higher food and energy costs and increasingly difficult financial conditions.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched their report saying, “As many as 1.7 billion people — one-third of whom are already living in poverty — are now highly exposed to disruptions in food, energy and finance systems that are triggering increases in poverty and hunger.”

Thirty-six countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for more than half their wheat imports, including some of the world’s poorest countries, he said, and wheat and corn prices have risen 30% just since the start of the year.

Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the U.N. agency promoting trade and development who coordinated the task force, said the 1.7 billion people live in 107 countries that have “severe exposure” to at least one dimension of the crisis — rising food prices, increasing energy prices and tightening financial conditions.

The task force said 69 of the countries, with a population of 1.2 billion people, face a “perfect storm” and are severely or significantly exposed to all three crises. They include 25 countries in Africa, 25 in Asia and the Pacific, and 19 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The United Nations on Thursday announced it was releasing $100 million from its emergency fund for seven hunger hotspots, Yemen and six African countries — Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan and Nigeria.

“Hundreds of thousands of children are going to sleep hungry every night while their parents are worried sick about how to feed them,” U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said in a statement. “A war halfway around the world makes their prospects even worse. This allocation will save lives.”

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric was asked about Polyansky’s comments and whether Guterres is concerned that sanctions are driving up food prices.

“I think it would be safe to say that there would be no sanctions if there were no conflict,” Dujarric replied.

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UN assembly suspends Russia from top human rights body

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to suspend Russia from the world organization’s leading human rights body over allegations of horrific rights violations by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, which the United States and Ukraine have called war crimes.

It was a rare, if not unprecedented rebuke against one of the five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called the vote “a historic moment,” telling the assembly: “We have collectively sent a strong message that the suffering of victims and survivors will not be ignored” and that Russia must be held accountable “for this unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war.”

Thomas-Greenfield launched the campaign to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council in the wake of videos and photos showing streets in the town of Bucha strewn with the bodies of civilians after Russian soldiers retreated. The deaths have sparked global revulsion and calls for tougher sanctions on Russia, which has vehemently denied its troops were responsible.

Russia is only the second country to have its membership rights stripped at the rights council. The other, Libya, was suspended in 2011 by the assembly when upheaval in the North African country brought down longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council is tasked with spotlighting and approving investigations of rights violations, and it does periodic reviews of the human rights situation in all 193 U.N. member nations.

It has created commissions of inquiry — which provide its highest level of scrutiny on rights violations and abuses — for conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. It has also set up fact-finding missions in places like Libya, Myanmar and Venezuela.

The vote on the U.S. initiated resolution suspending Russia was 93-24 with 58 abstentions, significantly lower than on two resolutions the assembly adopted last month demanding an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine, withdrawal of all Russian troops and protection for civilians. Both of those resolutions were approved by at least 140 nations.

Russia’s deputy ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, said after the vote that Russia had already withdrawn from the council before the assembly took action, apparently in expectation of the result. By withdrawing, council spokesman Rolando Gomez said Russia avoided being deprived of observer status at the rights body.

Kuzmin said Russia considers adoption of the resolution “an illegitimate and politically motivated step” by a group of countries with “short-term political and economic interests” that he accused of “blatant and massive violations of human rights.”

The 47-member Human Right Council was created in 2006 to replace a commission discredited because of some members’ poor rights records. The new council soon faced similar criticism, including that rights abusers sought seats to protect themselves and their allies, and for focusing on Israel.

Along with Russia, four other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, China, France, and the United States, which rejoined this year — currently are serving three-year terms on the Human Rights Council. Other members with widely questioned rights records include, along with China, Eritrea, Venezuela, Sudan, Cuba and Libya.

While almost half the U.N.’s 193 member nations supported the resolution, more than half either voted against it, abstained or didn’t vote.

Explaining their decision not to support the resolution, some countries called it premature, noting there are ongoing investigations into whether war crimes have occurred, or said it would undermine the credibility of the Human Rights Council and the United Nations. Others said the resolution reflected American and European geopolitical agendas and what opponents called Western hypocrisy and selective outrage about human rights.

In addition to a Human Rights Council investigation, being led by former Norwegian judge Erik Mose, who previously served as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Court is conducting an investigation of possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Before the vote, Ukraine’s U.N. Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya urged assembly members to keep the Human Rights Council from “sinking” and suspend Russia, saying it has committed “horrific human rights violations and abuses that would be equated to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“Russia’s actions are beyond the pale,” he said. “Russia is not only committing human rights violations, it is shaking the underpinnings of international peace and security.”

In a document circulated by Russia and obtained by The Associated Press, Russia said the U.S. and other opponents want to preserve their control over the world and continue “the politics of neo-colonialism of human rights” in international relations.

Kyslytsya responded to Russia’s complaints saying: “We have heard, many times, the same perverted logic of the aggressor trying to present itself as the victim.”

The General Assembly voted 140-5 with 38 abstentions on March 24 on a resolution blaming Russia for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and urging an immediate cease-fire and protection for millions of civilians and the homes, schools and hospitals critical to their survival.

The vote was almost exactly the same as for a March 2 resolution that the assembly adopted demanding an immediate Russian cease-fire, withdrawal of all its forces and protection for all civilians. That vote was 141-5 with 35 abstentions.

Both of those votes were not legally binding but did have clout as a reflection of global opinion.

Thursday’s vote and Russia’s withdrawal, however, have a direct impact on Moscow’s voice in a human rights body that has increasingly become a venue for a global stand-off between Western democracies and autocratic countries. China will lose a key ally there.

China abstained in both assembly votes last month but voted against suspending Russia from the Human Rights Council.

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Peltz reported from New York. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten contributed from Geneva.

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