A/HRC/25/63
denied the right to effective remedies for human rights violations, including the right to the
truth. Parents and disappeared children have been denied the right to family life.
72.
Despite admitting to the abduction of 13 Japanese nationals by agents of the State,
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has never adequately disavowed the practice of
international abductions. Since the 1990s, its agents have abducted a number of persons
from Chinese territory, including nationals of China, the Republic of Korea and, in at least
one case, a former Japanese national.
73.
The commission finds that almost all of the foregoing victims remain disappeared.
Human rights violations continue against them and their families. The shock and pain
caused by such actions is indescribable.
IV.
Crimes against humanity
74.
In accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 22/13, the commission carried
out its inquiry with a view to ensuring full accountability, in particular where these
violations may amount to crimes against humanity. The commission is neither a judicial
body nor a prosecutor. It cannot make final determinations of individual criminal
responsibility. It can, however, determine whether its findings constitute reasonable
grounds establishing that crimes against humanity have been committed so as to merit a
criminal investigation by a competent national or international organ of justice.
75.
According to that standard, the commission finds that the body of testimony and
other information it received establishes that crimes against humanity have been committed
in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, pursuant to policies established at the
highest level of the State.6
76.
These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture,
imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political,
religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced
disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.
The commission further finds that crimes against humanity are ongoing in the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that
lie at their heart remain in place.
77.
Persons detained in political and other prison camps, those who try to flee the State,
Christians and others considered to introduce subversive influences are the primary targets
of a systematic and widespread attack against all populations that are considered to pose a
threat to the political system and leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
This attack is embedded in the larger patterns of politically motivated human rights
violations experienced by the general population, including the discriminatory system of
classification of persons based on songbun.
78.
In addition, the commission finds that crimes against humanity have been committed
against starving populations, particularly during the 1990s. These crimes arose from
decisions and policies violating the right to food, which were applied for the purposes of
sustaining the present political system, in full awareness that such decisions would
exacerbate starvation and related deaths of much of the population.
79.
Lastly, the commission finds that crimes against humanity are being committed
against persons from other countries who were systematically abducted or denied
6
14
See also A/HRC/25/CRP.1, sect. V.
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