commissioner

SEOUL, May 13 (UPI) — United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Wednesday called for an “all hands on deck” response to North Korea’s human rights crisis, saying efforts to address peace and security on the Korean Peninsula “need to be anchored in human rights.”

“The situation in the DPRK is a human rights crisis and it is high time the international community treats it as such,” Turk said at a press conference in Seoul, using the official acronym for North Korea.

“My office has continued to document patterns of ongoing gross human rights violations, some of which may amount to crimes against humanity,” he said.

Turk is on a three-day trip to South Korea, where he is meeting with civil society groups, North Korean escapees and senior government officials. It is the first visit by a U.N. human rights chief since 2015.

A 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry report found North Korea’s abuses to be “without parallel in the contemporary world” and recommended referring the country’s leadership to the International Criminal Court.

A follow-up assessment released last year by the U.N. human rights office said conditions in North Korea “have not improved over the past decade and, in many instances, have degraded,” citing worsening food shortages, forced labor and severe restrictions on movement and expression.

“It is clear that there needs to be accountability in all its forms, including non-judicial forms, for the grave violations that have plagued the DPRK for decades,” Turk said.

“It is equally clear that we need all hands on deck to craft fresh solutions for the way forward,” he added. “Peace and security on the Korean peninsula need to be anchored in human rights.”

Turk’s trip comes as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pursues improved ties with Pyongyang through confidence-building measures such as restricting activist groups from sending anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets across the border.

Lee’s administration has also taken a cautious approach to North Korean rights concerns, including dissolving a Unification Ministry office focused on the issue and suspending publication of an annual rights report. Advocacy groups have criticized the moves as a “troubling shift away from support for the victims of North Korean government repression.”

Turk pushed back against the notion that dialogue with Pyongyang requires softening criticism of its rights record.

“There is no paradox in engaging while addressing human rights issues,” he said. “Engagement cannot come at the expense of human rights. That was obviously a very important part of my dialogue with the authorities here.”

In March, South Korea joined 49 other countries in co-sponsoring a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution condemning North Korea’s abuses, despite speculation Seoul might withhold support.

Turk also addressed the case of two North Korean prisoners of war captured by Ukrainian forces in January 2025 after being deployed to support Russia’s war effort.

The soldiers have expressed a desire to go to South Korea rather than return to the North, where rights groups say they could face severe punishment.

Turk said international human rights law was “very clear” on the issue.

“The obligation not to send them back to areas where they could end up being harmed” applies in their case, he said.

Turk said his office continues to seek opportunities for dialogue with North Korean officials and called next week’s visit by a North Korean women’s soccer team to South Korea “encouraging.”

“Urgent steps are needed to find ways to exchange letters, resume family contacts and reunions, and release information clarifying the whereabouts and fate of disappeared and abducted people,” he said.

On Thursday, Turk is scheduled to travel to Gwangju to deliver a keynote address at the World Human Rights Cities Forum.

Walt Disney Co. has picked up a vocal ally in its fight against the Federal Communications Commission: one of the panel’s three commissioners.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez — the panel’s lone Democrat — took a rare step of sending a letter to Disney Chief Executive Officer Josh D’Amaro Monday to describe what she sees as a pressure campaign to weaken not just Disney’s ABC network — but all media outlets that provide critical coverage of President Trump.

“What Disney and ABC are facing is not a series of coincidental regulatory actions but a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator,” Gomez wrote.

The FCC’s efforts were all about “pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission,” Gomez wrote in the four-page missive to D’Amaro — Disney’s recently installed chief executive.

Her outreach comes after the FCC, in a highly unusual move, initiated an early review of the broadcast licenses for ABC stations that Disney owns, including KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles. Disney owns eight stations and its licenses were not set to expire for another two to five years.

The FCC also demanded that Disney’s Houston television station explain why the ABC daytime show, “The View,” should be entitled to an exemption from providing equal time rules for politicians whose opponent appears on a program.

Disney has said “The View” was granted an exemption — which is widely used among news programs — in 2002. Last Thursday, Disney sent a blistering letter to the FCC, challenging its inquiry on “The View.”

Gomez has been outspoken about the tactics of her colleague — FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee — and the dangers she said that certain FCC actions represent to 1st Amendment freedoms. Monday’s letter escalated her criticism and gives Disney potent ammunition to use in its legal battle against the FCC.

Disney and the FCC did not immediately comment.

Gomez, a telecommunications attorney, listed four key events, which began when Disney decided to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Trump one month after he was reelected for a second-term. Some free speech experts felt Disney had a chance to win that case, based on erroneous statements made by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos.

However, Disney agreed to pay $15 million in late 2024 to make the case go away.

“Whatever the legal calculations behind that decision, its effect was immediate and unmistakable,” Gomez wrote. “It told this administration that pressure works. It told every other company watching that capitulation was an option. And it opened the door to every action that has followed.”

Gomez said the administration’s goal has not been to bring challenges that the FCC would have to defend in court, but rather, to prompt TV networks to self-censor and tone down their news coverage as a way to avoid getting pulled into fights with the president and Carr.

“Most [FCC investigations] are destined never to be brought to any enforcement conclusion that could face judicial review,” Gomez wrote. “That is because the threat is the point.”

One member calls for a Presidential Medal of Freedom for a baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.

Another calls for court interventions by the Department of Justice on behalf of Amish parents fighting New York vaccine requirements and Catholic nuns challenging that state’s requirement that they accommodate hospice patients’ gender identities.

And the chair of the Religious Liberty Commission is calling for a federal hotline with this automated recording: “There is no separation of church and state.”

These are just some of the recommendations that members of the advisory panel formed by President Trump last year want to see included in the commission’s final report.

That report is still in the works, but commissioners had an opportunity to describe their wish lists during their most recent meeting in April. There was little dissent as the commissioners, most drawn from Trump’s base of conservative Christian supporters, covered the items they want in the report.

Their ideas reflect the prevailing perspectives on the definition of religious liberty among many conservative Catholic and evangelical activists: increasing avenues for religious expression in public schools, expanding opportunities for faith-based organizations to receive public money, and allowing for religious-based exemptions in areas ranging from labor law to classroom lessons to healthcare mandates.

Such views have also been reflected in Supreme Court decisions issued in recent years by its conservative majority.

Commission’s views criticized

Critics of the commission say it embodies a one-sided perspective of Trump’s supporters and is threatening a well-established constitutional separation of church and state.

A lawsuit by a progressive interreligious coalition argues that the commission fails to comply with federal law requiring advisory panels to feature diverse members and viewpoints.

The lawsuit echoes criticism that most commissioners are conservative Christian clerics and commentators; one is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi. The coalition says members have asserted that America is specifically a Judeo-Christian or Christian nation and notes that most commission meetings took place at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, an institution with Christian leadership.

The Republican administration is asking a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit. The government is citing legal technicalities and contending that the law does not define how a commission should be fairly balanced or whose viewpoints should be represented.

Another entity created by Trump — the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias — issued a report saying Christians faced discrimination under the administration of President Biden in areas such as education, tax law and prosecution of antiabortion protesters. Progressive groups said that report failed to document systemic discrimination, focused on causes favored by conservative Christians and amounted to advocacy rather than an investigation.

In a further interlocking of Trump-related initiatives, several members of the Religious Liberty Commission are scheduled to take part in a May 17 prayer event marking the country’s upcoming 250th birthday. Several also participated in a recent Bible-reading marathon staged largely at the Museum of the Bible.

Harmony and tension

The commission has mostly featured agreement among members, with one dramatic exception. One commissioner, Carrie Prejean Boller, was ousted in February after a contentious hearing on antisemitism.

Commission Chair Dan Patrick said Prejean Boller sought to “hijack” the hearing, in which she had sharp exchanges with witnesses about the definition of antisemitism and defended commentator Candace Owens, denying her record of antisemitic statements. Prejean Boller, a Catholic, contended that she was wrongly ousted for expressing her beliefs.

In other hearings, witnesses described how they defied workplace regulations that they said conflicted with their conservative religious values on gender, abortion, COVID-19 vaccines and more. Some said they were prevented, at least temporarily, from displaying a religious symbol at work or trying to sing a Christian song at a school talent show.

At the hearing devoted to antisemitism, Jewish witnesses spoke of being harassed and threatened at campus pro-Palestinian protests against Israel. The commission has also heard from Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and other witnesses.

Even so, critics said the commission mostly focused on conservative Christian and right-leaning political grievances.

The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president of the progressive Interfaith Alliance, one of the groups suing over the commission’s composition, said the panel’s omissions are as significant as what it focuses on.

He said the commission has failed adequately to address such issues as anti-Muslim efforts in Texas and elsewhere, and also the rise of antisemitism on the right, not just the left.

Separation of church and state

Raushenbush said he is especially worried about the commission chair’s challenging the very notion of church-state separation.

Patrick, a Republican who is the Texas lieutenant governor, repeatedly denounced a concept that is embedded in Supreme Court precedent.

“We need to say there is no separation of church and state,” Patrick said at the April meeting. “That’s a lie.” He suggested printing “a million bumper stickers” to that effect.

No one at the commission meeting disagreed.

Trump made similar comments at a prayer event at the White House in 2025. “They say separation between church and state,” he said. “I said, all right, let’s forget about that for one time.”

While the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, 20th century decisions by the Supreme Court cited Thomas Jefferson’s description of the 1st Amendment as creating “a wall of separation between church and state.” The court applied the 1st Amendment’s prohibition of any church “establishment” to the states in addition to the federal government, citing the 14th Amendment’s ban on states denying citizens’ rights.

Courts have since wrestled with how to balance freedom of religion and freedom from government-sponsored religion.

Schools, vaccines and workplaces

Patrick has advocated for prayer and Ten Commandments postings in public schools.

“I don’t have any malice towards anyone that doesn’t believe in any type of faith,” Patrick told fellow commissioners. “That’s fine. That’s what America is about. But these organizations that are pushed by some ideology and pushed by someone’s bank account who wants to remove God from our country? We need to push back.”

On other issues, various commissioners called for requiring schools and workplaces to post notices of the rights of religious expression and exemptions.

Some called for restoring full pay and pension benefits for military service members who were discharged for refusing COVID-19 vaccines.

Bishop Robert Barron of the Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minn., called for allowing religious groups such as Catholic Charities to receive federal money without compromising on traditional church teachings about the family.

He also said Catholic immigrants in detention should have humane treatment and access to sacraments and that immigration agents should not disrupt worship services in enforcement actions. The administration last year eliminated a policy against immigration enforcement in sanctuaries, which other religious leaders said should not occur at any time.

Kelly Shackelford, president and chief executive officer of the legal organization First Liberty Institute, called for new requirements that governments pay all legal bills if they lose a religious liberty case. He said many individuals lack the money to challenge the government in court.

“That would be a huge shifting of power in favor of citizens,” he said.

Smith writes for the Associated Press.