Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters Wednesday that in a phone call with President Trump he emphasized the role China must play in containing North Korea’s nuclear threat and asserted that China is “the country with the biggest lever” to pull on sanctions.

Describing the 30-minute call as a “very warm discussion,” Turnbull declined to give Australian media specifics to which the two world leaders agreed. “Naturally we focused on the threat posed by North Korea. We are absolutely of the one mind in condemning this reckless conduct,” he said.

Turnbull added that China’s role in North Korea’s increasing belligerence towards America and South Korea is pivotal to solving the crisis.

“China does have the greatest leverage by far and we will both continue to encourage China to bring more economic pressure to bear on North Korea to bring this regime to its senses,” Turnbull said. “A conflict would be catastrophic, everyone understands that, and the best avenue to achieve that, that we can see, is continued enforcement of strong economic sanctions, and, of course, the country with the biggest lever in that regard is China.”

Turnbull confirmed he and Trump agreed on “the importance of the full enforcement of the current sanctions regime and the importance of additional sanctions which, of course, are under consideration at the moment, being imposed in the future.”

Australia’s news.com.au reported that Trump “hired” Turnbull as an intermediary to help convince the Chinese communist government to agree to another round of international sanctions on North Korea. “The US President yesterday sought advice from the Prime Minister about how Australia connects with China, given its longstanding relationship with its biggest trading partner,” news.com.au reported.

China’s current crackdown on human rights and civil liberties is the “most severe” since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the Human Rights Watch agency has claimed.

“China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,” said Kenneth Roth, director of the agency Human Rights Watch agency on Tuesday. In the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese government slaughtered hundreds of peaceful opposition protesters while attempting to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

“What’s less appreciated is the lengths to which China goes to prevent criticism of that record of oppression by people outside China, particularly those at the United Nations,” Roth continued. “The stakes are not simply human rights for the one-sixth of the world’s population who live in China, but also the survival and effectiveness of the U.N. human rights system for everyone around the globe.”

Roth added that the findings should serve as a “wake-up call” for the international community.

The report highlighted many of China’s most prominent human rights abuses, including the prevention of opposition activists leaving the country to attend U.N summits, as well as the failure to allow human rights officials to visit the country.

It also details China’s alignment with other dictatorships at the United Nations Human Rights Council, including Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Venezuela, where the countries have “worked together to weaken the universality of human rights standards and resist the Council’s ability to adopt country-specific approaches.”

The report also alleged that China has routinely withheld information relating to their use of torture, treatment of the disabled, and children’s rights, and has tried to prevent any evidence of such practices from appearing online.

Meanwhile, Chinese foreign affairs spokesperson Geng Shuang, dismissed the report as “groundless,” contending that China continues to play an “active role” in the United Nations human rights efforts.

“We urge the relevant organization to remove their tinted lenses and objectively and justly view China’s human rights development,” he said.

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has also enforced a crackdown on freedom of expression, with criticism of the government remaining strictly illegal, as part of former leader Hu Jintao’s vision of the “promotion of a harmonious society.”

Censorship of both the press and social media is also rampant, although many people in China are finding ways around the censorship by dodging what is known as the ‘Great Firewall,’ which selectively blocks content chosen by the government. Blocked sites include Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as the websites of most western news organizations.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com

The AFP news agency reported on Wednesday afternoon that a draft U.N. resolution prepared by the United States would impose an oil embargo against North Korea.

Reuters adds that the draft resolution also bans North Korean textile exports, prevents North Korean laborers (who are virtually slaves rented out by their government) from working abroad, freezes the assets of dictator Kim Jong-un, his political party, and four of his top officials, and ban Kim from traveling outside his country.

“U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has said she wants the 15-member council to vote Monday on the draft resolution to impose new sanctions over North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear test. However, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia has said a Monday vote may be ‘a little premature,’” Reuters reports.

If the vote succeeds, it would represent the ninth, and by far the strongest, round of international sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear missile program. The current sanctions regime caps North Korean labor, which is a major source of revenue for the Kim regime, but does not ban it entirely. Banning textile exports would cost the Communist nation about $750 million annually.

Support for the resolution from China and Russia, both of which supply a great deal of oil to North Korea, is uncertain. China is also the primary customer for North Korean textile exports.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier on Wednesday that he opposes cutting off North Korea’s oil supply, despite an appeal for support from South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Putin argued that further sanctions would be ineffective in deterring North Korea’s behavior, would impose an unacceptable humanitarian cost to North Korea’s impoverished citizens, and might destabilize the North Korean government.

“We should not act out of emotions and push North Korea into a dead end. We must act with calm and avoid steps that could raise tensions,” Putin said after meeting with Moon, according to South Korean media reports quoted by the New York Times.

As for China, the NYT quotes speculation that Beijing might have grown sufficiently annoyed with Kim Jong-un to support tougher sanctions, but shutting down China’s “Friendship Pipeline” to North Korea would be an act of tremendous symbolic importance, as well as potentially crashing the rickety North Korean economy and unleashing a flood of refugees into China, which is one of China’s greatest fears.

China and Russia are currently engaged in a bizarre struggle for the affections of North Korea, so if Putin is clearly signaling that Russia will not cooperate with oil and trade embargoes, China might be unwilling to surrender its influence and market share in North Korea to ambitious Moscow.

As the Times analysis notes, North Korea’s oil stockpiles are largely earmarked for military use, guaranteeing that hardship from an embargo would hit the civilian populace first, while the military retained enough fuel to fight for a month or more. In another unique North Korean twist, civilian vehicles are commonly designed to run on charcoal, so a fuel embargo might lead to massive deforestation and accompanying environmental horrors, from flooding to famine.

Furthermore, the China-North Korea “Friendship Pipeline” is constructed in such a way that shutting it down for more than a few hours could permanently damage it.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe indicated on Wednesday that he will try to convince Russia to cooperate with tougher sanctions on North Korea, including an oil embargo, when he attends an economic forum with Russia and South Korea in Vladivostok.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has vowed “the real battle is only just beginning”, as the Court of Justice of the European Union demands that Budapest allow Brussels to settle migrants in Central Europe.

Szijjártó made his comments in response to the EU court throwing out a joint challenge by Hungary and Slovakia to a European Commission scheme to forcibly redistribute some 120,000 migrants based in the EU border countries.

The so-called migrant quotas were opposed by Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Romania, and later repudiated by Poland — but rammed through via the controversial Qualified Majority Voting system.

“The decision was not a legal or professional one but a political one,” Szijjártó railed, declaring that EU politics had “raped European law and European values”.

Forced EU ‘solidarity’ https://t.co/ZQXU0ces5i

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 7, 2017

“The European Commission supports one thing: illegal immigration, but not border protection and defence,” Szijjártó continued, in a blistering attack against the EU’s unelected quasi-government, which acts as both executive and as sole initiator of EU-wide legislation.

He said the EU court’s ruling “asserts the power of the European Commission over EU member-states. This is unacceptable, and we shall do everything possible to protect the country.

“The real battle is only just beginning, and Hungary will be making use of all opportunities for legal redress to ensure that nobody can be relocated to Hungary against the wishes of the Hungarian people.”

The EU Forces Migrant Quotas With Qualified Majority Voting, You Should Know What That Is.. http://t.co/SDDpo2FOcu http://pic.twitter.com/pQdb6XtLhH

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 22, 2015

Hungary will be looking to the rest of the Visegrád — a conservative-leaning bloc comprised of Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland — for support in its ongoing struggle with Brussels.

Prime Minister of Poland Beata Szydło has said she “expected” the ruling, but insisted it will “not change the position of the Polish government in terms of migration policy”, according to a report by the Frankfurter Rundschau — which believes Hungary and Poland may simply ignore the EU court.

This would set the stage for a sharp escalation in hostilities between the EU and its recalcitrant Central European members, with Brussels attempting to inflict large fines or other punishments for failure to comply with its diktats.

Follow Jack Montgomery on Twitter: @JackBMontgomery

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