Representational Image. AP
Pyongyang: A recent watchdog report claims that prisoners in North Korea are subjected to heinous mistreatment and torture while they are being held.
The report claims that one person was even made to consume insects as a supplement to his diet because the meagre food supply was insufficient to keep him alive.
An NGO called Korea Future that tracks and examines human rights abuses in North Korea released a report on Pyongyang’s extensive prison system on Friday, claiming that prisoners there are subjected to routine “torture and ill-treatment.”
The report claims that during and after detention, those held in North Korea’s more than 200 prisons and detention centers are “re-educated through forced labor, ideological instruction, and punitive brutality with the purpose of compelling unquestioning obedience and loyalty” to Kim Jong Un.
The study lists a number of violations of international law committed within the criminal justice system, including rape and sexual assault, forced labor, cruel or inhumane treatment, torture, and health deprivation.
According to Korea Future, the data was gathered through interviews with the victims, offenders, and witnesses, as well as a review of internal records.
The case studies of three victims who were imprisoned for attempting to flee North Korea or for assisting others to flee the country receive a lot of attention in the report.
According to Korea Future, the events described in the report clearly violate international law and warrant further investigation. An effort to obtain a comment was not quickly answered by North Korea’s office at the UN.
Right to Food – ‘Denied’
One 30-year-old pregnant woman who had been detained in China was returned to North Korea and imprisoned at three different locations, one of which was a re-education centre..The report claims that the woman was subjected to 56 different types of torture while she was being held in pre-trial detention, including being compelled to have an abortion when she was at least seven months pregnant.
According to the report, other prisoners were denied their “right to food,” which is the denial of “quantitatively and qualitatively adequate food.”
Roaches as ‘food Supplement’
According to the story, one man in his 40s who aided North Korean citizens flee the country while also smuggling goods from China was imprisoned at a re-education camp and tortured through “systematic denial of food.”
It was also mentioned that there had been 987 similar instances reported to the criminal justice system.
The amount of food this man got was based on how much work he put in each day, according to the report, and he was subjected to forced labour.
He received just over four ounces of corn per day if he made his quota, but this amount decreased to under three ounces if he didn’t.
According to the report, the man “regularly” captured cockroaches and rodents to supplement the meagre food he received, and as a result, he experienced “extreme weight loss.”
Positional Tortures
Beyond cases of forced abortions and hunger, North Korea’s prison system has also subjected inmates to “positional torture.”
According to the report, people are frequently made to endure prolonged fixed positions, which “can include forced standing or crouching, suspension of the body from a chain, shackling in stress positions, and sitting in deliberately uncomfortable positions for multiple hours or days.”
According to the report, positional torture was used against a lady in her fifties at a North Korean detention facility. This incident was one of 570 that were documented throughout the criminal justice system. She was in stressful situations for 30 days in a row.
According to the report, she was made to spend 17 hours a day “sitting cross-legged on the floor, with her hands on her lap and her head raised.”
The report claimed that she was only able to walk after eating. When prisoners shifted from their stress positions, she saw them being beaten. A chair that was designed to limit her mobility was also used to force her into additional stressful positions, which hurt her knees and joints.
The results of Korea Future are consistent with the types of abuse mentioned in a recent UN report on North Korea’s human rights situation. In particular, this study claims that women are subjected to unsanitary living conditions, hard labor, and harsh living circumstances in the nation’s detention facilities.
Women are incarcerated in cruel circumstances and denied food. According to the study, they are subjected to torture, cruel treatment, forced labor, and gender-based violence, including sexual violence, by state agents.
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