North Korean women faced torture, rape, malnutrition in detention, says UN report

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korean women detained in prison camps suffered torture, rape and other forms of “multiple and serious” violence by security and police officials, a UN human rights report said Tuesday, citing accounts. of more than 100 women.

The women, detained between 2009 and 2019 after not fleeing the country, related in interviews with UN investigators in Seoul after their release, how they were deprived of food, sleep, natural light and fresh air while in detention centers. and prison camps.

Many also said in the report titled “I Still Feel the Pain” that they were subjected to torture, invasive body searches, forced abortions, and even rape by authorities there. All the women finally managed to defect to South Korea.

“I didn’t sleep and I worked because I didn’t want to be hit. It was unbearable at a level that I even tried to commit suicide, ”said one woman.

North Korea did not immediately react to the report, but previously called the criticism of its human rights record a “plot to topple” its regime.

Another woman recalled one of her first nights in detention in 2010 when she was raped by an officer.

“He threatened that … he would be humiliated if I rejected him. He even told me that he could help me be released sooner if I did what he said,” he said.

Collecting information in isolated North Korea is notoriously difficult, and the report acknowledges that lack of access to the country limits the agency’s ability to verify interviewee accounts.

Daniel Collinge, a UN human rights officer who co-authored the report, said the project aimed to put pressure on Pyongyang to improve the situation, and urged other countries not to deport deserters who risk their lives to achieve freedom and prosperity.

South Korea’s government, Moon Jae-in, which is trying to improve ties with the North, was recently criticized after revoking the licenses of the deserting groups and banning their campaigns to send propaganda pamphlets against Pyongyang through the border.