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Fifteen detainees reported suffering torture and sexual abuse when they were arrested in North Korea. Pre-trial detainees are reportedly treated less favorably than animals.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is the first international advocacy organization to interview those who have been held in pretrial detention in dictatorial North Korea since 2011. The report is based on interviews with 15 women and one man, but the organization also spoke with officials who are well acquainted with the North Korean justice system.
According to the report, those arrested are locked in cramped and dirty cells, forced to testify, denied food and clothing, and sexually abused and raped. Phil Robertson, deputy director of the law firm’s Asian branch, said detainees would only get food if they somehow managed to bribe the guards to deliver food sent by their families.
According to Robertson, North Koreans are not accidentally afraid of being placed in pre-trial detention, as only those with enough money and influence can avoid torture to bribe prison guards or prosecutors.
However, those who do not have the appropriate record for this will be the ones who will suffer the most abuse, especially in the first phase of pretrial detention.
According to a police officer who interviewed him, although the rules prohibit hitting an arrested person, the police must testify at the beginning of the first phase of the arrest, so they beat the detainees to obtain testimony.
Detainees reported having to sit motionless on the floor of the cell for 16 hours for days, kneeling or cross-legged, and even the slightest movement was punished. As punishment, they were beaten with a truncheon, belt or bare hand, but there were those who had to run 1,000 times across the yard.And another inmate reported that if he or one of his cellmates moved, they had to remove their hands from the rack and the guards trampled their boots.
According to detainee Yoon Young-cheol, they were treated worse than animals, and in the end, they felt like animals too. He was arrested in 2011 for alleged espionage, but claims that for days he did not even know why the police detained him because they beat him instead of questioning him.
In addition to beatings, interviews also report rampant rapes. For example, a woman alleges that she was also raped in detention by a police officer who interrogated her and that another police officer sexually abused her during interrogation.In the report, the advocacy organization calls on the North Korean government to acknowledge human rights violations and stop torture in prisons. The organization also calls on South Korea, the United States and UN countries to put pressure on the North Korean government. (Guardian)
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