Survivors of a North Korean prison have detailed the awful conditions they endured including rape, forced abortions, torture and starvation. 9News
and other detention facilities, according to former detainees whose testimony forms the basis of a new report released by a human rights watchdog this week.
"Comparable to the Soviet Gulag, penal system is not to detain and rehabilitate persons sentenced by courts in safe and humane facilities. Nor is its purpose to decrease recidivism and increase public safety," the report says. Korea Future is hoping other countries will consider pursuing domestic court cases against North Korean agents and that some of its findings can be used as evidence. And, it hopes western countries will apply targeted sanctions against some of the accused in the report.Due to North Korea's self-imposed isolation, which has become even stricter since the country closed its borders in 2020 in response to Covid-19, CNN cannot independently verify the accounts.
"That such a country takes issue with the 'human rights' situation of other countries is indeed a mockery of and an insult to human rights itself," reads the statement. At one point her cell was around two square metres, "and I know this because we were sleeping zig-zag style and someone's feet were touching my shoulders."
A landmark UN investigation in 2014 found that Pyongyang was using this type of camp to keep a lid on dissent -- and the ruling Kim dynasty in power -- and that up to 120,000 people were held in them. It also estimated that over the past few decades hundreds of thousands of political prisoners had died in kwalliso amid "unspeakable atrocities."
Kim Jiwon, the Korea Future investigator who interviewed many of the survivors, praised their courage in speaking up, adding that he had found it was "really, really difficult to hear their stories."While difficult, asking the survivors to relive their experiences and cross checking their accounts against each other had been vital in corroborating and building up a picture of what had occurred, Kim said.
"In the past, we had to crawl with both hands and knees when we were moving, but in 2017, we could stand up and walk. All you needed was to bend your back forward 90 degrees when moving," he said.
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