Committee on Finance
SUBSTITUTE RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, the City of Chicago is a home rule unit of government pursuant to the 1970 Illinois Constitution, Article VII, Section 6(a); and
WHEREAS, pursuant to its home rule power, the City of Chicago may exercise any power and perform any function relating to its government and affairs including the power to regulate for the protection of the public health, safety, morals, and welfare; and
WHEREAS, said authority must at times be used to take a stance in the face of injustice and danger; and
WHEREAS, in January 2016, Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, visited Pyongyang as part of a tour group and was arrested after being accused of committing a "hostile act" by attempting to take a political poster from a hotel; and
WHEREAS, after what was reported to be a one hour long trial, he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor; and
WHEREAS, in the course of what was to be a seventeen month imprisonment, North Korean officials report that he contracted botulism and slipped into a vegetative state after taking a sleeping pill, a statement challenged by the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, who examined Mr. Warmbier on June 13, 2017 after North Korea released him in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness;" and
WHEREAS, twenty-two year old Mr. Warmbier was returned to his Ohio family and passed away a week later; and
WHEREAS, Dr. Daniel Kanter, director of the University of Cincinnati's Health Neurocritical Care Program, said Warmbier's MRI scan showed "extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of the brain" but no evidence of a skull fracture; and
WHEREAS, reports that doctors who examined Mr. Warmbier upon his return home found extensive brain damage but could not explain the causes of his injury are coupled with accusations that he had been tortured while in captivity; and
WHEREAS, a neutral response to the violation of Mr. Warmbier's human rights puts every other American on North Korean soil ...
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