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Suspects in North Korea are subjected to torture, humiliation and sexual violence carried out by a criminal justice system that treats them “under animals.” The conclusions come from the first report on the brutality of the conditions of preventive detention in the country. prepared by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
According to the non-governmental organization for the defense of human rights, detainees are placed in cramped and unsanitary cells, forced to confess and denied access to adequate food and clothing.
“The prisoners literally languish for lack of food, unless they are able to bribe the guards so that their families send them food”, revealed the deputy director of HRW for Asia, Phil Robertson, quoted by the newspaper “The Guardian” and by the France-Presse news agency. “People have very good reason to fear North Korea’s arrest and detention,” he said. The official added that only suspects with political connections or money to bribe police officers, prison guards and prosecutors have any chance of saving themselves and their families.
Most of the detainees and prisoners are subjected to abuses that include torture, forced confessions and inhumane conditions of confinement. Detained women are subject to sexual harassment and assault, including rape, according to the report.
“Endemic torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”
The document is based on interviews with 15 women and men detained in the country, as well as former officials with knowledge of the criminal justice system. All those surveyed are North Koreans who fled the country after 2011, the year the current leader, Kim Jong-un, took office, says The Guardian.
Former detainees report that they were forced to sit on the floor of the cell, kneel or cross-legged for periods of time that reached 16 hours a day. The slightest movement carried punishments that could range from aggression (with hands, sticks or leather belts) to the obligation to run in circles on the ground up to a thousand times.
The report calls on the North Korean authorities to publicly acknowledge human rights violations and end “endemic torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of detainees. HRW also calls on South Korea, the United States and other United Nations member states to “put pressure on the North Korean government in public and in private.”
The UN has already accused North Korea of ”systematic, widespread and flagrant” violations of human rights, including torture, extrajudicial executions and maintaining a network of gulags for political prisoners.
