(American Military News)
Sources in repressive North Korea say that the regime is turning a blind eye to human rights abuses as conditions in the country’s numerous labor camps are worsening. Crimes against humanity are rampant within the camps, which, according to a 2017 report by the War Crimes Committee of the International Bar Association (IBA), house between 80,000 and 130,000 political prisoners.
RFA’s Korean Service learned from its sources that those detained in the camps must endure hunger onset by food shortages, fatigue due to hard labor, injury from physical assault and disease from unsanitary living conditions.
“A family member of someone at Chungsan labor camp went to visit and shocked to find the inmate was about to collapse due to malnutrition,” said a source from South Pyongan Province on Sunday.
“These camps are where people go when they’ve been sentenced and imprisoned for serious crimes,” the source said.
The source explained that once the prisoners arrive in the camps, guards cease treating them like humans, and see them as outlets to exercise what little power they might wield. Read more