A new white paper has found that abuse of the right to life and food has been in decline in North Korea since the start of the current century, but that civil and political rights remain in as parlous a state as ever.
Database Center for North Korean Human Rights revealed the analysis on the 5th via the newly-published ‘2012 White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea’.
Kim In Sung, who heads the research team at Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, told Daily NK, “The North Korean people suffered extreme poverty and violation of their basic human rights, to food and life, during the March of Tribulation in the 1990s. Coming out of that, people started illegal economic and social activities, and have been demanding things like property rights, personal dignity and liberty.”
Kim added, “Basic human rights have thus been improving, but abuses of freedom of speech, property, belief, the rights of detainees and the right of abode are still being reported in greater numbers, all of which shows that the civil and political rights of the people remain in dire condition.”
According to the white paper, the average number of reported human rights violations by each North Korean defector interviewed has decreased from 9.8 in the 1980s, 9.6 in the 1990s down to 7.7 in 2012.
However, the white paper still reflects 42,408 cases of human rights abuses from 23,437 people, exceeding the 41,390 cases gathered on East Germany by West Germany’s Salzgitter Archives.
