北朝鮮の司法制度下で人は「動物以下」、拷問まん延　人権団体報告

【ソウルＡＦＰ＝時事】国際人権団体ヒューマン・ライツ・ウオッチは19日、司法制度が不透明な北朝鮮では公判前勾留中の拷問や屈辱的扱い、自白の強要がまん延しており、人々は「動物以下」に扱われていると報告した。（写真は資料写真）
　米国に拠点を置く同団体は、かつて収容施設にいた人や元政府関係者数十人に調査を実施。たびたび拷問が行われる収容施設の非人道的な状況を浮き彫りにした。
　調査に応じた人々は、棒で殴ったり蹴ったりするなどの未決拘禁者に対する虐待は、勾留の初期段階に「特に激しい」と証言。元警官は、「規則で殴打は一切禁止されているが、調査や取り調べの初期段階で自白させる必要がある」「自白させるために殴らなければならない」と述べた。
　施設に収容されていた人々は、床にひざまずいたり、脚を組んだ状態で床に座ったりすることを１日１６時間強制され、少しでも動けば罰せられたと語った。
　処罰には手、棒、革のベルトで殴打するほか、庭を最大１０００周走らせるなどがあった。
　以前収容されていた一人は、「自分か他の人たちが（監房の中で）動けば、看守が私か同房者全員に柵の外に手を出すよう命じ、その手をブーツで何度も踏みつける」と述べた。
　また調査に応じた複数の女性は、施設内で性的暴行がまん延していたと証言した。
　ヒューマン・ライツ・ウオッチは報告書で、北朝鮮政府に「収容施設にまん延する拷問と、残酷かつ非人道的で屈辱的な扱い」を終わらせるよう要請し、韓国や米国、その他の国連加盟国に「公式かつ非公式に北朝鮮政府に圧力をかけるよう」訴えた。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2020/10/20-12:26）

Torture, humiliation and coerced confessions are rampant in North Korea's pretrial detention system which treats people as worth less than an animal, a rights group said Monday in a report on the country's opaque legal processes.
US-based Human Rights Watch drew on interviews with dozens of former North Korean detainees and officials to highlight what it called inhuman conditions at detention facilities that often amount to torture.
Nuclear-armed North Korea, accused of widespread rights abuses by the United Nations and other critics, is a closed country and little is known about its criminal justice system.
Mistreatment of detainees -- beating with a stick or kicking -- was especially harsh in the early stages of pretrial detention, interviewees said.
The regulations say there shouldn't be any beatings, but we need confessions during the investigation and early stages of the preliminary examination, a former police officer said.
So you have to hit them in order to get the confession.
Former detainees said they were forced to sit still on the floor, kneeling or with their legs crossed, for as long as 16 hours a day, with even a flicker of movement leading to punishment.
The punishments ranged from hitting -- using hands, sticks, or leather belts -- to forcing them to run in circles around a yard up to 1,000 times.
If I or others moved (in the cell), the guards would order me or all the cellmates to extend our hands through the cell bars and would step on them repeatedly with their boots, said former detainee Park Ji Cheol.
Yoon Young Cheol, another former detainee, added: There, you are just treated like you are worth less than an animal, and that's what you end up becoming.
Some female interviewees testified to rampant sexual violence at the facilities.
Kim Sun Young, a former trader in her 50s who fled North Korea in 2015 said she had been raped by her interrogator at a detention centre.
Another police officer sexually assaulted her by touching her underneath her clothes while interrogating her, Kim added, but said she had been powerless to resist.
The report called on Pyongyang to end endemic torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in detention and urged South Korea, the United States and other UN member states to publicly and privately pressure the North Korean government.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is the third generation of his family to rule the country, where state surveillance is widespread and dissent not tolerated.
The country already stands accused by the UN of systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations that range from torture, extrajudicial killings to running prison camps.
Pyongyang maintains that it protects and promotes genuine human rights, and says there is no justification for the West to try to set human rights standards for the rest of the world.
It condemns international criticism on the issue as a smear campaign to undermine its sacred socialist system.