UNHRC STUDY GUIDE

Topic: Prevention of the human rights violations in North Korean prisons

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INDEX:

1) Background Of The Committee2) Timeline of the United Nations Human Rights Councils Actions3) Key Terms4) Prison Camps in North Korea5) What Resolution Should Cover6) Bibliography

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I. Background Of The CommitteeBeing created by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March 2006, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is the body responsible for the strengthening the protection of human rights all around the world, and for addressing human rights violations and make recommendations on such issues.Formed as the replacement of former United Nations Commission on Human Rights, the Council is made up of 47 United Nations Member States. UN General Assembly is the principal organ which elects the Member States.

II. Timeline of the United Nations Human Rights Councils Actions1. On 21 March 2013, at its 22nd session, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Human Rights Council Resolution 22/13 mandated the body to investigate the systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in the DPRK, with a view to ensuring full accountability, in particular, for violations that may amount to crimes against humanity.1 2. Among the violations to be investigated were those pertaining to the right to food, those associated with prison camps, torture and inhuman treatment, arbitrary detention, discrimination, freedom of expression, the right to life, freedom of movement, and enforced disappearances, including in the form of abductions of nationals of other states.3. On 7 May 2013, the President of the Human Rights Council announced the appointment of Michael Kirby of Australia and Sonja Biserko of Serbia, who joined Marzuki Darusman of Indonesia, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to serve as the members of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK. Mr Kirby was designated to serve as Chair. The Commissioners, who served in a non-remunerated, independent, expert capacity, took up their work the following month. The Commission of Inquiry was

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supported by a Secretariat of nine experienced human rights officials provided by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Once appointed, however, the Secretariat worked independently of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.4. This report builds upon the oral updates which the Commission of Inquiry provided in accordance with Resolution 22/13 to the Human Rights Council in September 2013 and to the United Nations General Assembly in October 2013.5. The Commission implemented the mandate entrusted by the Member States of the Human Rights Council bearing in mind the Council’s decision to transmit the reports of the Commission to all relevant bodies of the United Nations and to the United Nations Secretary-General for appropriate action.6. Previous resolutions such as; Resolution 22/13 requires the Commission to carry out its inquiry “with a view to ensuring full accountability, in

particular where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity”. Paragraph 31 of the

Special Rapporteur’s report, to which Resolution 22/13 refers, provides that the “inquiry should examine the issues of institutional and personal accountability for [grave, systematic and widespread violations], in particular where they amount to crimes against humanity” and provide a “detailed examination and legal analysis of whether crimes against humanity are being perpetrated”.

III. Key Termsa. Penal System: The penal system refers to the method in which

people are punished for violating the legal system. Penal comes from the latin word "poenalis” which means to punish. The penal system runs as an almost autonomous system, where prisoners are kept and given basic rights. They are given housing within the prison, as well as the basic provisions for survival and health. the penal system was formed originally as an alternative to

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capital punishment, some convicted criminals may spend years in prison before their execution. However, prisoners serving a temporary sentence within the penal system are given the chance to rehabilitate while within the structure, allowing them the opportunity to make amends for their crimes and become a productive part of society again upon release.

b. Concentration Camps: a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.

c. Political Repression: Political repression is the maltreatment of an individual or group for political reasons, especially for the purpose of limiting or forbidding their ability to take part in the political life of society. It often is evidenced in the form of human rights violations, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration and violent action such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. Where political repression is approved and coordinated by the state, it may represent state terrorism, genocide, politicide or crimes against humanity. Ina dictatorship, totalitarian state and similar regimes political repressions are seen in a systemic and violent form.

d. Refugees: The 1951 Refugee Convention spells out that a refugee is someone who "owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country."Since then, UNHCR has offered protection and assistance to tens of millions of refugees, finding durable solutions for many of them. Global migration patterns have become increasingly complex in modern times, involving not just refugees, but also

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millions of economic migrants. But refugees and migrants, even if they often travel in the same way, are fundamentally different, and for that reason are treated very differently under modern international law.

IV. Prison Camps in North Korea Crimes against humanity entail gross human rights violations of a

scale and level of organization that shock the conscience of humanity. First set out in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945, the definition of crimes against humanity has been shaped by the body of jurisprudence emanating from the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL); and national courts. The state practice emerging from the negotiations leading to the adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute) and its subsequent ratification by 122 states has further clarified and elaborated the definition of crimes against humanity.Over the past decade, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations Human Rights Bodies have brought specific attention on human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK). The information given has been based on the testimonies of North Koreans who since the late 1990s have moved to the other countries, especially South Korea. There have been NGO reports and satellite images that are confirming the existence of vast system of prison labor camps as well as many other serious infringements of civil, political, economic and social rights that the North Korean government denies continuously.

a.

Satalite image of a prison in North Korea

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i. Hoeryong Concentration CampCamp 22 is located in Hoeryong county, North Hamgyong province, in northeast North Korea, near the border with China and Russia. It is situated in a large valley with many side valleys, surrounded by high mountains.The camp is controlled by roughly 1,000 guards and 500–600 administrative agents. The guards are equipped with automatic rifles, hand grenades and trained dogs.In the 1990s there were an estimated 50,000 prisoners in the camp. Prisoners are mostly people who criticized the government, people deemed politically unreliable (such as South Korean prisoners of war, Christians, returnees from Japan) or purged senior party members.Based on the guilt by association principle they are often imprisoned together with the whole family including children and the elderly.All prisoners are detained until they die; they are never released.Former guard An Myong-chol describes the conditions in the camp as harsh and life-threatening.He recalls the shock he felt upon his first arrival at the camp, where he likened the prisoners to walking skeletons, dwarfs, and cripples in rags. An estimates that about 30% of the prisoners have deformities, such as torn off ears, smashed eyes, crooked noses, and faces covered with cuts and scars resulting from beatings and other mistreatment. Around 2,000 prisoners, he says, have missing limbs, but even prisoners who need crutches to walk must still work. Prisoners get 180 g (6.3 oz) of corn per meal (two times a day), with almost no vegetables and no meat. The only meat in their diets is from rats, snakes or frogs that they catch. Ahn estimates that 1,500–2,000 people die of malnutrition there every year, mostly children. Despite these deaths, the inmate population remains constant, suggesting that around 1,500–2,000 new inmates arrive each year. Children get only very basic education. From six years on they get work assigned, such as picking vegetables, peeling corn or drying rice, but they receive very little food, only 180 g (6.3 oz) in total per day. Therefore, many children die before the age of ten years. Aged people have to work to their death. Seriously ill prisoners are quarantined, abandoned, and left to die.

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Single prisoners live in bunkhouses with 100 people in one room. As a reward for good work, families are often allowed to live together in a single room of a small house without running water. But the houses are in poor condition; the walls are made from mud and have a lot of cracks. All prisoners have to use dirty and crowded communal toilets.Prisoners have to do hard physical labour in agriculture, mining and factories from 5:00 am to 8:00 pm (7:00 pm in winter), followed by ideological re-education and self-criticism sessions. New Year’s Day is the only holiday for prisoners. The mines are not equipped with safety measures and, according to Ahn, prisoners were killed almost every day. They have to use primitive tools, such as shovels and picks, and are forced to work to exhaustion. When there was a fire or a tunnel collapsed, prisoners were abandoned inside and left to die. Kwon Hyuk reported that corpses are simply loaded into cargo coaches together with the coal to be burnt in a melting furnace. The coal is supplied to Chongjin Power Plant, Chongjin Steel Mill and Kimchaek Steel Mill, while the food is supplied to the State Security Agency or sold in Pyongyang and other parts of the country.Ahn explained how the camp guards are taught that prisoners are factionalists and class enemies that have to be destroyed like weeds down to their roots. They are instructed to regard the prisoners as slaves and not treat them as human beings. Based on this the guards may at any time kill any prisoner who does not obey their orders. reported that as a security officer he could decide whether to kill a prisoner or punish him in other

ways, if he violated a rule. He admitted that once he ordered the execution of 31 people from five families in a collective punishment, because one member of a family tried to escape.In the 1980s public executions took place approximately once a week according to

Kwon.[48] However Ahn reported that in the 1990s they were replaced by secret executions, as the security guards feared riots from the assembled crowd. He had to go to the secret execution site a number of times and there he saw disfigured and crushed bodies.In case of serious violations of camp rules, the prisoners are subject to a process of investigation, which produced human rights violations, such as reduced meals, torture, beating and sexual harassment. In Haengyong-ri

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there is a detention center to punish prisoners.Because of the harsh treatment, many prisoners die in detention and even more leave the detention building crippled.Ahn and Kwon reported about the following torture methods used in Camp 22:

Water torture: The prisoner has to stand on his toes in a tank filled with water to his nose for 24 hours.Hanging torture: The prisoner is stripped and hung upside down from the ceiling to be violently beaten.Box-room-torture: The prisoner is detained in a very small solitary cell, where he could hardly sit, but not stand or lie, for three days or a week. Kneeling-torture: The prisoner has to kneel down with a wooden bar inserted near his knee hollows to stop blood circulation. After a week the prisoner cannot walk and many die some months later.Pigeon torture: The prisoner is tied to the wall with both hands at a height of 60 cm (2.0 ft) and must crouch for many hours.

There are beatings every day, if prisoners do not bow quickly or deeply enough before the guards, if they do not work hard enough or do not obey quickly enough. It is a frequent practice for guards to use prisoners as martial arts targets. Rape and sexual violence are very common in the camp, as female prisoners know they may be easily killed if they resist the demands of the security officers.Ahn reported about hundreds of prisoners each year being taken away for several “major construction projects”, such as secret tunnels, military bases or nuclear facilities in remote areas. None of these prisoners ever returned to the camp. Ahn is convinced that they were secretly killed after finishing the construction work to keep the secrecy of these projects.

b. Yodok Concentration CampCamp inmates also suffer from pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra, and other diseases, with no available medical treatment. New prisoners receive clothes that predecessors had worn until their

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death. Most clothes are dirty, worn-out, and full of holes. Prisoners have no proper shoes, socks, or gloves, and usually no spare clothes. The dead are buried naked because their possessions are taken by other prisoners. All prisoners are covered with a thick layer of dirt, as they are overworked and have almost no opportunity to wash themselves or their clothes. As a result, the prisoners’ huts are foul-smelling and infested with lice, fleas, and other insects. Prisoners have to queue in front of dirty community toilets, one for every 200 prisoners, using dry leaves for cleaning.The camp guards make prisoners report on each other and designate specific ones as foremen to control a group. If one person does not work hard enough, the whole group is punished. This creates animosity among the detainees, destroys any solidarity, and forces them to create a system of self-surveillance.Men, women, and children perform hard labor seven days a week and are treated as slaves. Labor operations include a gypsum quarry and a gold mine, textile plants, distilleries, a coppersmith workshop, agriculture, and logging. Serious work accidents often occur.Work shifts in summer start at 4 a.m. and end at 8 p.m. Work shifts in other seasons start at 5:30 a.m., but are often extended past 8 p.m. when work quotas are not met, even when dark. After dinner, prisoners are required to attend ideological education and struggle sessions from 9 to 11 p.m., where inmates who do not meet the targets are severely criticized and beaten. If prisoners cannot memorize the instructions given by Kim Il-sung, they are not allowed to sleep, or their food rations are reduced.Most of the primary school children attend school in the morning. The main subject is the history of revolution of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In the afternoon they carry out hard labor with very high work quotas in terms of amount and intensity. Children are beaten with a stick for failure to meet the day's quota.The following torture methods are described in testimonies of former prisoners:

“Pigeon torture”: The prisoner’s arms are tied behind his back, his legs tied together, and he is hung from the ceiling for several days.Forced water ingestion: The prisoner is strapped to a table and forced to drink large amounts of water. Guards then jump on a board laid on the swollen stomach to force the water out.

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Immersion in water: A plastic bag is placed over the prisoner’s head and he is submerged in water for long periods of time.Beatings: Prisoners are beaten every day if work quotas were not met, if they do not kneel down quickly enough before the guards, or just for the sake of humiliation. Prisoners often become disabled or die from the beatings. Even children are severely beaten and tormented.Prisoners are completely at the guards’ mercy; guards can abuse them without restraint. Former prisoners witnessed a man being tied by the neck to a vehicle and dragged for long distances and a primary school child being beaten and kicked hard on his head. In both cases, the prisoners died soon after.

V. What Resolution Should Cover1) Solutions for torturing and ways of tortures2) Child malnutrition in the prison camps in North Korea3) Women in the prison camps4) Punishments that are not against human rights5) The food crisis6) How to maintain freedom of speech7) Executions and death penalty8) Refugee problem caused by the prison camps in North Korea.

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VI. Bibliography

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17705/1/MPRA_paper_17705.pdf

http://www.ask.com/government-politics/penal-system-ef461d964118392#full-answer

https://www.hrnk.org

http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/political-repression/

http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c125.html

https://my.apa.org/apa/idm/login.seam?ERIGHTS_TARGET=http%3A%2F%2Fpsycnet.apa.org%2Fpsycinfo%2F2009-07121-000&AUTHENTICATION_REQUIRED=true

https://books.google.com.tr/books?hl=tr&lr=&id=p5wt8hUagc8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=korea+human+rights&ots=ULkKy8kPa5&sig=NrnRILzvbX1bZc7gvfqWV4SZkvw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=korea%20human%20rights&f=false

Human Rights Council Twenty-fifth session Agenda item 4 Human rights situations that require the Council’s attention Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on

human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

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