The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights has placed a magnifying glass over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the treatment practices in prison camps. A shocking report was released by the UN which states:
The police and security forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea systematically employ violence and punishments that amount to gross human rights violations in order to create a climate of fear that pre-empts any challenge to the current system of government and to the ideology underpinning it. The institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns. The use of torture is an established feature of the interrogation process in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, especially in cases involving political crimes.
Persons who are found to have engaged in major political crimes are “disappeared”, without trial or judicial order, to political prison camps (kwanliso).
North Korean leaders have been accused of employing murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence and mass starvation. According to CNN, the commission said it would refer its findings to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible prosecution. Kim Jong Un received a letter with a warning that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity.
North Korea has responded saying that the state: “does not content itself with ensuring the authoritarian rule of a small group of people, but seeks to dominate every aspect of its citizens’ lives and terrorizes them from within.”
The government of North Korea — also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK — rejected the report, seeing it as a way to undermine its government.
“It is nothing more than an instrument of political plot aimed at sabotaging the socialist system by defaming the dignified images of the DPRK and creating an atmosphere of international pressure under the pretext of ‘human rights protection,” the government said in a prepared statement.
