The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held a closed-door video conference on December 12, after which eight countries, including the United States, issued a statement condemning North Korea’s human rights record.
According to an AFP report, German Ambassador to the UN Christoph Heusgen read out the joint statement of the eight countries on the 12th: “The human rights situation in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is appalling and has even deteriorated.”
Heusgen was accompanied by ambassadors from the United States, Britain, France, Belgium, Dominica, Estonia and Japan.
In the statement, it was noted that “the people of North Korea have lost almost all human rights, such as their freedom of expression, association, movement, peaceful assembly, religion or belief. Freedom of the press in the country is non-existent, much less political opposition to the Kim Jong-un regime’s strict control over its people.”
In particular, the joint statement criticized North Korea’s “long-standing system of labor camps for political prisoners, in which hundreds of thousands of North Koreans, including children, have died as a result of arbitrary executions, forced labor, starvation, abuse, sexual and gender-based violence, and other forms of inhumane treatment.”
The statement also criticized the multiple and serious human rights violations suffered by women by the state, particularly sexual and gender-based violence, and demanded that the DPRK must immediately stop these acts.
Women subjected to daily sexual violence in North Korea’s penal institutions cannot help but be mad
According to a DailyNK report, sources inside North Korea indicate that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of “patient 49 (mental illness)” among women in political internment camps. In other words, the physical and mental suffering of women is increasing and the human rights abuses are becoming more severe.
According to the statistics of the comprehensive management of the inmates in the political prison in mid-August, the number of female patients is more than twice as many as the number of male patients among the 49 patients in the prison managed by the National Defense Province of North Korea.
In particular, 78% of the female inmates in the Yodok Political Prison (No. 15) in South Hamgyong Province have developed psychiatric symptoms.
Since political prisoners in North Korea have been deprived of their citizenship rights, the women in the political prison are exploited for their labor in accordance with the usual style of “treating them like animals instead of human beings,” so they do not care about their gender.
In addition, the “daily sexual violence” is also very difficult to bear. Even young girls who are newly admitted to the facility may get pregnant and have abortions at any time.
The main reason for this is that the facility’s instructors habitually commit such acts, even sexually assaulting women who are still breathing in the middle of the day, spouting the rhetoric, “It’s an honor for you to sacrifice yourself to a human being.”
Horrific North Korean human rights shadowy prisoners’ encounters are chilling
Last year, the United Nations also released a report on the human rights situation in North Korea, showing the shady human rights practices in the country, where prisoners who try to escape or steal are publicly executed, and some are beaten with sticks and metal bars and even stripped naked.
The report, which was collected and analyzed by the U.N. human rights office, interviewed more than 330 defectors, mostly North Korean women who had originally fled to China, from September 2018 to May 2019. These individuals have accused North Korean jailers of serious violations of their rights to life, liberty and security. The DPRK, however, has consistently denied any human rights violations.
The report, submitted to the United Nations by the Human Rights Office, reveals that prisoners in North Korean custody are stripped naked for body searches and that women are even subjected to inappropriate searches, including sexual violence. Some guards further require prisoners to sit or kneel for the entire day and are only allowed to stretch their limbs for two minutes or less each hour, which can result in individual or collective punishment if they move without permission; numerous people have been beaten or killed.
Reports indicate that detainees will likely be questioned for a month or more, and that the conditions in jail are poor. In addition to being too small and overcrowded to lie down in, the sanitary conditions are very poor, and the prisoners are not fed enough, resulting in widespread malnutrition. There have been many reports of people dying of starvation in North Korean prisons because they could not survive. Hepatitis, tuberculosis, typhoid and pleurisy are prevalent in the prisons, and worst of all, there is little or no medical care provided.
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