On Monday, the United Nations released a scathing report on North Korea, strongly criticizing its alleged human rights abuses as without "any parallel in the contemporary world." The 36-page report and its 373-page addendum add gruesome details to what the world already knew or at least suspected: North Korea is a totalitarian state that, as official policy, does some pretty awful things to its citizens and quashes most basic freedoms.
The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, led by retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, based its report on a year of public hearings with about 80 witnesses and private, confidential interviews with another 240 victims, including people who'd spent time in North Korean prison camps, and other experts. North Korea did not allow the U.N. team into the country to collect information firsthand.
Pyongyang's "crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons, and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation," the report says. It includes satellite photos and grisly cartoon images of life inside North Koran gulags, based on interviews with survivors:
Read Full Article »