UN Report Says North Korea Continues To Violate Human Rights Including Religious Freedom

Seven years after a United Nations report revealed that North Korea committed human rights violations unparalleled in the world, the organization's latest report showed that the country continues to perpetrate such crimes.

In accordance with the most recent report released by The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. concluded that the North Korean regime persisted to violate basic human rights, including religion. In its 2014 report, the organization said that the crimes committed by the country "reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," International Christian Concern reported.

Released on Jan. 11, the U.N. report noted that the country committed crimes against humanity of enslavement for its "harsh conditions within the ordinary prison system," as well as crime of torture for its "systematic infliction of severe physical and mental pain or suffering upon prison detainees."

Prisoners are subject to psychological abuse, beatings, medical denial, prolonged stress positions and starvation. It is estimated that the country detains between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners in its four prison camps.

In addition, pregnant prisoners experience harsh treatment which include forced abortions and doing hard labor. Worse cases even include mothers having been made to participate or watch their own children being killed.

The report also says that the government "is engaged in a systematic and widespread attack against people considered a threat to the country's political system and leadership, including people who practise religion." In addition, the citizens who are practicing their religion are "systematically imprisoned without due process and are subjected to harsh treatment for exercising basic human rights."

The totalitarian state is also "engaged in the systematic abduction, denial of repatriation and subsequent enforced disappearance of persons from other countries on a large scale."

"A lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula can be achieved only if such violations end and the rights of victims to truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence are fulfilled," the report said.

U.N. High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet urged the international community "to prioritize justice and to take immediate steps to prevent further infliction of serious human rights violations against the people of the DPRK."