Warmbier, a student of the University of Virginia, was imprisoned and tortured in North Korea in 2016 on an unclear charge of subversion. He died shortly after being released in a vegetative state in 2017.
The Manhattan Community Board 6, a New York city community board, said on Tuesday that it will hold a meeting next month to review a proposal to designate the southeast corner of East 44th Street and 2nd Avenue as "Otto Warmbier Way."
The proposal, envisioned several years ago by human rights groups and New York City council members in collaboration with Warmbier's family, will be discussed as a petition to rename the street was recently submitted, coinciding with the 7th anniversary of Warmbier's death.
"The fact that an American lost his life, there is something that we need to remember and we need to honor his family and we need to speak out against the oppression that the North Korean people go through every single day," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio once stressed the importance of the proposal at an event in June 2021.
New York City has a history of renaming streets near diplomatic missions to honor individuals of significance and the latest move is part of efforts to raise awareness of the brutality of the North Korean regime and its human rights abuses.
