Sobering: UN report finds “‘abundant evidence” of mass torture in North Korea

Kim Jong Il and  Sec. of State Albright
Kim Jong Il and Sec. of State Albright in Pyongyang – 10-24-2000.

Via CNN:

A stunning catalog of torture and the widespread abuse of even the weakest of North Koreans reveal a portrait of a brutal state “that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” a United Nations panel reported Monday.

North Korean leaders employ murder, torture, slavery, sexual violence, mass starvation and other abuses as tools to prop up the state and terrorize “the population into submission,” the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea said in its report.

The commission traced the abuses directly to the highest levels of the North Korean government while simultaneously blaming world leaders for sitting on their hands amid untold agony.

“The suffering and tears of the people of North Korea demand action,” commission Chairman Michael Kirby told reporters.

The group said it would refer its findings to the International Criminal Court for possible prosecution. It also sent a letter warning North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he could face prosecution for crimes against humanity.

[…]

The U.N. panel released its 400-page report after hearing from more than 320 witnesses in public hearings and private interviews.

You can read the full report here.

Many have long suspected that when and if the time comes and the lid is lifted wide open on the DPRK, its story fully told, we’ll see and read about horrors on a scale so massive that we’ll weep loudly in outrage over our decades-old feckless policies against the brutal tyrants there who have carried out the widespread abuse and torture of its citizens.

I pray I’m wrong, but fear I am not.

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