The UN yesterday reported on a deeply institutionalized system of forced labor in North Korea, which in some cases could amount to the crime against humanity of enslavement.
In a damning report, the UN Human Rights Office detailed how people in the reclusive and authoritarian country are “controlled and exploited through an widespread, multi-layered system of forced labour.”
“The testimonies in this report give a shocking and distressing insight into the suffering inflicted through forced labour upon people,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.
Photo: Korean Central News Agency via Reuters
“These people are forced to work in intolerable conditions — often in dangerous sectors with the absence of pay, free choice, ability to leave, protection, medical care, time off, food and shelter,” he said.
Many face regular beatings and women are “exposed to continuing risks of sexual violence,” he said.
The rights office relied on a range of sources for the report, including 183 interviews conducted from 2015 to last year with victims, and witnesses who escaped North Korea and were living abroad.
“If we didn’t meet the daily quota, we were beaten and our food was cut,” said one victim cited in the report.
The latest allegations follow a landmark report published by a UN team of investigators a decade ago that documented forced labor among other rampant rights abuses such as deliberate starvation, rape and torture in North Korea.
Yesterday’s report zeroed in on an institutionalized system, with six different types of forced labor, including during the country’s 10-year minimum military conscription. There were also compulsory state-assigned jobs and the use of revolutionary “Shock Brigades,” or state-organized groups of citizens forced to carry out “arduous manual labor,” often in construction and agriculture, the report said.
Such projects can last for months and even years, during which time workers must live on site and receive little or no remuneration, it found.
There were also other forms of work mobilizations, including of school children, and work performed by people sent abroad to earn foreign currency for the state, the report said.
For instance, North Koreans were reportedly sent to help build facilities ahead of the FIFA World Cup events in Russia and Qatar.
Those sent abroad lose up to 90 percent of their wages to the state, work under constant surveillance and have their passports confiscated, with almost no time off, the report said.
In some instances the level of control and exploitation “may reach the threshold of ‘ownership,’” the report said.
This, it said, might “constitute the crime against humanity of enslavement.”
The most serious concerns surrounded places of detention, where forced labor victims systematically had to work under threat of physical violence and in inhumane conditions, it said.
The report called on the UN Security Council to refer the situation to the International Criminal Court.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS