North Korea: repression increases for measures against Covid-19

Human rights violations have further increased in North Korea due to anti-Covid-19 measures, the UN chief said in a report calling for a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to be considered.

“Information received confirmed that the state has further increased the repression of the rights and freedoms of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in the context of maintaining strict restrictions related to Covid-19, and then intensifying them,” writes Antonio Guterres in this balance published this week, which covers the period from August 2021 to July 2022.

“The closure of the country’s borders and the restrictions on freedom of movement and social interaction within the country have allowed the authorities to further curb the flow of information and ideas among the population,” he insists.

In particular, there are “reasonable grounds to believe that the State is increasingly forcing the population to perform unpaid forced labour”.

The UN fears that the country “cannot cope” with the epidemic

North Korea, one of the first countries in the world to close its borders in January 2020 after the virus emerged in neighboring China, has long boasted of its ability to keep the virus at bay. Before finally announcing his first case last May, prompting the UN Secretary-General to fear a further worsening of the rights situation in the country.

“It is feared that the first outbreak of Covid-19 in the country will lead to a further deterioration of the general human rights situation, including access to adequate food and medical care, and that the country’s “health infrastructure will not be able to cope with a strong outbreak of Covid-19”, underlines the report, which is concerned about the absence of an international presence in the country since the start of the pandemic to observe the situation.

In this context, the UN Secretary General calls on the international community to “act”, in particular “to establish responsibilities if it turns out that crimes against humanity have been committed, in order to avoid impunity”.

“In this sense, the Security Council, acting on its own initiative or on the recommendation of the General Assembly, may consider referring the situation to the International Criminal Court,” he suggests.