UN calls for probe into North Korea
2013-01-14 16:56
Geneva - UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Monday
demanded an international probe into the alarming human rights situation in
ultra-authoritarian North Korea, decrying more than a half-century of
devastating abuses.
"It is time the international community took a much
firmer step towards finding the truth and applying serious pressure to bring
about change for this beleaguered, subjugated population of 20 million
people," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a rare and
strongly worded statement on North Korea.
Pillay lamented the "deplorable human rights
situation" in North Korea, "which in one way or another affects
almost the entire population and has no parallel anywhere in the world”.
She acknowledged that there had been some hope that the
change of leadership in the single-party state after the death of Kim Jong-Il
in December 2011 could bring change.
"But a year after Kim Jong-Un [Kim Jong-Il's
youngest son] became the country's new supreme leader, we see almost no sign of
improvement," she lamented.
Pillay also cautioned that the international community
had been so concerned about North Korea's nuclear programme and rocket launches
that it had largely overlooked the situation of the population in the country.
200 000 inmates
Despite the country’s almost total isolation, the UN
human rights chief said the little information that has filtered out bore
testimony to "a system that represents the very antithesis of
international human rights norms."
She described meetings with two survivors of North
Korea's network of political prison camps, which are believed to hold at least
200 000 people.
"Their personal stories were extremely
harrowing," she said, listing rampant violations inside the camps,
"including torture ... summary executions, rape, slave labour and forms of
collective punishment that may amount to crimes against humanity."
The living conditions in the camps were
"atrocious", she said, describing an acute lack of food, medical care
and clothing.
One mother told her how she had been forced to wrap her
new-born baby in leaves to keep her warm.
The other person she met had been born into a camp, where
he had spent the first 23 years of his life.
Widespread use of death penalty
"He was not only tortured and subjected to forced
labour, but, at the age of 14, was also made to watch the execution of his
mother and his brother," she said.
The widespread use of the death penalty is also cause for
deep concern, Pillay said, noting that people in North Korea could be executed
for "minor offences after wholly inadequate judicial processes”.
She also highlighted the still unresolved cases of
Japanese and South Korean nationals abducted by North Korean agents in the
1970s and 1980s.
"I believe an in-depth inquiry into one of the
worst, but least understood and reported, human rights situations in the world
is not only fully justified, but long overdue," Pillay said.
