Executions, forced labour and starvation persist in North Korea, UN official says
A decade after a landmark UN report found North Korea guilty of crimes against humanity, many abuses continue, a UN official has said.
James Heenan, the UN human rights official, said that while North Korea has engaged more with some international bodies, it has tightened control over its population. Mr Heenan said he was still surprised by the continued prevalence of executions, forced labour and reports of starvation in the authoritarian country.
Mr Heenan, who investigated rights in the isolated state, told Reuters in an interview that 'the post-Covid period for DPRK means a period of much greater government control over people's lives and restrictions on their freedoms', referring to North Korea 's official name (Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK).
A follow-up UN report by Mr Heenan's team at the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in DPRK is expected later this year.
North Korea has repeatedly rejected allegations of human rights abuses, claiming that the UN and foreign nations are using such accusations as political tools to undermine its government.
The 2013 UN report into the human rights situation in North Korea stated: 'We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief.'
'Women and men who exercised their human right to leave the DPRK and were forcibly repatriated spoke about their experiences of torture, sexual violence, inhumane treatment and arbitrary detention. Family members of persons abducted from the Republic of Korea and Japan described the agony they endured ever since the enforced disappearance of their loved ones at the hands of agents of the DPRK,' said Michael Kirby, the then-chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK.
A 2023 Reuters investigation revealed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kim Jong Un focused on constructing an extensive network of walls and fences along the once loosely controlled border with China, later extending similar barriers around Pyongyang.
According to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Covid-19 spread in North Korea for over two years before the regime acknowledged its presence in May 2022, mishandling the crisis in ways that restricted basic freedoms and forced much of the population to survive without adequate support.
In March this year, Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group claimed Pyongyang implemented excessive and unnecessary measures to tackle Covid that made the 'already isolated country even more repressive'.
On Wednesday, SI Analytics, a satellite imagery firm based in Seoul, reported that North Korea is renovating a major prison camp near the Chinese border, likely in reaction to global criticism, while also tightening physical control over inmates, disguised as infrastructure upgrades.
Mr Heenan said that interviews with over 300 North Korean defectors revealed deep despair, with some even hoping for war to change the situation.
'Sometimes we hear people saying they sort of hope a war breaks out, because that might change things,' he said.
Several of those interviewed will share their stories publicly for the first time next week.
'It's a rare opportunity to hear from people publicly what they want to say about what's happening in the DPRK,' Mr Heenan said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘We'll keep fighting': search persists for priest thought to be murdered on Pinochet torture ship
In the weak winter sunshine forensic investigators in white suits cast long shadows as they stepped between gravestones at Playa Ancha cemetery in the Chilean coastal city of Valparaíso. But as the rhythmic click of spades and the throb of an excavator faded, a third search for the remains of Michael Woodward reached a frustrating conclusion. No trace has ever been found of Woodward, an Anglo-Chilean priest who is thought to have been murdered on the Esmeralda, a Chilean navy corvette which Gen Augusto Pinochet's bloody regime used as a floating torture centre after its coup d'état on 11 September 1973. But almost two years since the Chilean state assumed responsibility for finding the missing victims of Pinochet's regime for the first time, cautious, methodical progress is being made. 'The fact that they managed to carve out a space for a permanent, ongoing public policy commitment is no mean feat,' said Dr Cath Collins, director of the transitional justice observatory at Diego Portales University in Santiago. In August 2023, the National Search Plan for Truth and Justice became an official state policy, with the aiming of centralizing information, finding the remains – or trace the final movements – of 1,469 disappeared people, and seeking reparations for their families. In the harrowing, uncertain days after Pinochet's coup, Miguel Woodward, as the tall, cheerful priest was known to his Chilean friends, laid low in the valleys around the city. Born to an English father and Chilean mother in Valparaíso and educated in the UK, he had returned to Chile to become a priest, joining a leftist political movement under the banner of socialist president Salvador Allende's Unidad Popular coalition. Early on 22 September 1973, Woodward was kidnapped from his home by a navy patrol and taken to the Universidad Santa María, which had become a makeshift detention centre. He was beaten and submerged in the campus swimming pool, before being transferred to a naval academy and then on to the Esmeralda, where he is thought to have died of the injuries sustained under torture. 'That's when our search began,' said Javier Rodríguez, 58, an affable, wild-haired construction worker with an unbreakable will to find the priest he remembers vividly as a family friend. Rodríguez founded the Friends of Miguel Woodward organisation, and has set up a cultural centre in Woodward's name, a narrow room a few doors down from where the priest was abducted, where a faded poster promoting the National Search Plan is stuck in the window. 'If Miguel were alive now, he would be marching for Palestine, for the Mapuche [Indigenous people], for all injustices,' he said. 'They murdered him because they were afraid of him.' Since democracy returned to Chile in 1990, human rights cases have made halting progress through the Chilean courts. Woodward's sister, Patricia, was able to file a case in 2002, but it was soon closed for lack of evidence. Eventually, when it was reopened on appeal, 10 low-ranking officers were implicated in his torture. Two were convicted, but neither ever served jail time. Michael Woodward's final moments have been pieced together from eyewitness accounts and testimonies, but those of many others have not – and activists fear that time is running out. 'The easy cases are all done,' said Dr Collins, 'Some of the people who might have been going to talk have died.' In Chile, the armed forces have long tried to obstruct progress, either by remaining silent or handing over partial or misleading information. Progress has been achingly slow. 'The state never did enough to find any of the disappeared, but now the resources are there,' said Rodríguez. 'Maybe the [search] plan came late, but it represents the state coming to settle its debts.' Searches are being carried out at 20 sites up and down the country, but as yet, no finds have been made – and some fear that progress could soon be checked. 'Of course there is going to be disappointment that there haven't been any big discoveries yet, but if the plan survives the next administration, that's almost an achievement in itself,' said Dr Collins. In November , Chileans will vote in a presidential election in which three of the four current leading candidates offer rightwing agendas to replace leftist president Gabriel Boric, who ratified the national search plan. Woodward's last home, painted bright blue, still stands on a Valparaíso street corner; neighbours still use 'Miguel's house' as a reference when giving directions. And despite its dark history, the Esmeralda is still in service in the Chilean navy. It is frequently picketed by protestors at ports around the world, returning periodically to haunt its victims from Valparaíso's wide bay. Chile's forensic medical service says that further searches for Woodward's body will be carried out in the cemetery in Playa Ancha imminently. 'If we find Miguel, the fight doesn't end there,' said Rodríguez. 'He lived with us and we have a history with him, but he's just one of those we are missing – there will still be hundreds more to find.' 'We'll keep fighting until we have justice, whatever that may look like.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Tens of thousands march against Hungary's government for LGBT rights
Tens of thousands of people gathered for Budapest Pride march despite the government's threat of 'legal consequences'. The country's main Pride march was cast into doubt earlier this year after the country's ruling Fidesz party – led by the rightwing populist Viktor Orbán – backed legislation that created a legal basis for Pride to be banned, citing a widely criticised need to protect children. The move caused outrage from within Hungary and beyond, turning Budapest Pride into a rallying cry against a government that has long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions and gradually undermining the rule of law.
BreakingNews.ie
2 hours ago
- BreakingNews.ie
At least 71 killed in Israel's attack on Tehran's Evin prison, Iran says
At least 71 people were killed in Israel's attack on Monday on Tehran's Evin prison, a notorious facility where many political activists have been held, Iran's judiciary said. Spokesman Asghar Jahangir posted on the office's official Mizan news agency website on Sunday that those killed included staff, soldiers, prisoners and members of visiting families. Advertisement The agency had earlier confirmed that the top prosecutor at the prison had been killed in the strike. It said Ali Ghanaatkar, whose prosecution of dissidents led to widespread criticism by human rights groups, would be buried at a shrine in Qom.
