The UN’s top human rights official on Monday said that as many as 200,000 people are being held in North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labor, and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.
For that reason, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that nations must mount an independent probe into North Korea’s human rights record.
The UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly, which includes all 193 member nations, have condemned North Korea’s human rights record, but Pillay said stronger action is needed, including the instigation of a probe authorized by the UN, but performed by experts independent of the world organization.
The stinging criticism and call from the world body’s top human rights official for “a full-fledged international inquiry into serious crimes” in North Korea comes a year after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un took control of the nuclear-armed Asian country upon the death of his father, former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
“There were some initial hopes that the advent of a new leader might bring about some positive change in the human rights situation,” Pillay said. “But a year after Kim Jong-un became the country’s new Supreme Leader, we see almost no sign of improvement.”
Pillay’s statement was based on extensive research submitted by a special investigator for the 47-nation Human Rights Council based in Geneva, Switzerland, and meetings that she held there last month with two survivors of the prison camps, said Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville.
A UN report in September last year by UN Special Rapporteur Marzuki Darusman said that about 150,000 to 200,000 people are estimated to be imprisoned in six North Korean camps for alleged political crimes.
Pillay said she found “their personal stories were extremely harrowing” after meeting with the two survivors.
“They described a system that represents the very antithesis of international human rights norms. We know so little about these camps, and what we do know comes largely from the relatively few refugees who have managed to escape from the country,” Pillay said. “The highly developed system of international human rights protection that has had at least some positive impact in almost every country in the world, seems to have completely bypassed North Korea.”
She said the camp system involves “rampant violations, including torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment, summary executions, rape, slave labor and forms of collective punishment that may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Living conditions are reported to include scarce food, little to no medical care and inadequate clothing.
“One mother described to me how she had wrapped her baby in leaves when it was born and later made her a blanket by sewing together old socks,” Pillay said.
While the world’s focus remains on the development of North Korea’s nuclear program and its rocket launches, those important issues “should not be allowed to overshadow the deplorable human rights situation ... which in one way or another affects almost the entire population and has no parallel anywhere else in the world,” she said.
Pillay said North Korea also has used the death penalty to punish minor offenses and abducted South Koreans and Japanese over the years.
North Korea’s mission to the UN in Geneva, which was given a copy of the report before its publication on Monday, did not have an immediate public response to it.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing