North Korea as Absolute Human Rights Oppression Country

North Korea has been selected as one of the 12 countries with the lowest standard of human rights in the world.

Announced on April 14, the sixth annual report of “The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OPHRD),” a French human rights activist organization, selected 12 countries including North Korea, China, Bhutan, Eritrea, Equatorial Guinea, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam as the “absolute oppression countries” with the lowest level of human rights.

Next to “absolute oppression countries,” 23 countries including Iran, Indonesia, and Tunisia were selected as “systematic oppression countries.”

In this report, OPHRD publicized that labor union activists were murdered in Columbia, lawyers were illegally detained in Iran, human rights activist were suppressed in Cameroon, and over 50 human rights organizations were forced to disperse last year in Belarus. In the military strife regions of Chechen, Indonesia, Columbia, Côte d`Ivoire, and Congo, opportunistic political leaders accused the human rights movement of having connections with terrorist organizations, hence making it gradually difficult to criticize the violation of human rights. The report additionally introduced several incidents of assassination, death threats, severe treatment, illegal arrest and detention, defamation of character, and restriction of passage committed against human rights activists and non-governmental organizations in 80 countries last year.

Jei-Gyoon Park phark@donga.com