The parents of Otto Warmbier, the student who died following his imprisonment in North Korea, have spoken out against negotiations with the regime of Kim Jong Un.
Otto Warmbier was on an organised tour of the country as a 21-year-old student when he was arrested, accused of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his hotel room. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour but sent home in a coma from which he did not recover. He died in June 2017.
His parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier are adamant he was murdered by the regime and have sued North Korea, saying their son was 'brutally tortured and murdered'. North Korea has denied this, saying he died of botulism, and a US coroner found no signs of torture on his body.
Speaking yesterday at the UN's New York headquarters, his father told a human rights symposium: 'Ten months ago we buried our son. We had no idea we'd be speaking at the UN and these countless other things. But we woke up and we realised North Korea wants us to lock ourselves in a room and do nothing, and we think that's a bad idea.
'With the lawsuit that we're filing against North Korea which is the narrative, the events that occurred while they had Otto hostage and they were using him as a pawn, we are trying to build a pathway that leads directly to Kim and his regime, to force them to be answerable for their actions.'
His mother Cindy said of North Korea: 'You can't negotiate, you just have to shame them. We need to stand up for Otto, we need to stand up for all these families. We have to do it, we owe it to the world. I can't let Otto die in vain.'
She continued: 'We're not special, but we're Americans and we know what freedom's like, and we have to stand up for this. We have to.'
Their intervention comes at a sensitive time for international relations as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made peace overtures to the South and US president Donald Trump is set to meet him shortly. Trump took a personal interest in the case and tweeted that 'Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea'. He described Fred and Cindy Warmbier as 'powerful witnesses to a menace that threatens our world'.
