A/HRC/31/38 24. On the occasions of the seventieth anniversary of the liberation from Japanese colonial rule, in August 2015, and of the foundation day of the Workers’ Party, in October 2015, the Government reportedly released a large number of prisoners. However, allegedly that did not appear to include political prisoners. In 2015, the Government repatriated at least four nationals of the Republic of Korea who had been detained in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Two citizens of the Republic of Korea who had been convicted for espionage in June 2015 reportedly continued to serve life sentences, as did a third citizen of the Republic of Korea who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 for espionage and setting up an underground church. The three individuals were reportedly missionaries. In December 2015, a Canadian pastor, Hyeon Soo Lim, was reportedly convicted of crimes against the State and sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour. B. Rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and freedom of association 25. Severe restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression, including the right to information, peaceful assembly and freedom of association remained in place. While article 67 of the Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea guarantees citizens “freedom of speech, press, assembly, demonstration and association”, in practice, there is no protection for those rights. In their annual report on global Internet usage for 2014, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ranked the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the bottom of 191 countries, with a zero percentage of individuals using the Internet.6 26. Some external bodies took steps to improve access to information inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. For example, in November 2015, the British Broadcasting Corporation announced plans to expand its radio coverage to the country. Several radio stations based in Seoul, some of which are staffed with people who have left the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, continued to broadcast programmes for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The audience for those programmes is reportedly significant, particularly in the border regions, but no official data can be obtained on the number of listeners. That is in part owing to the difficulty of conducting surveys inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and to the risk of persecution that listeners face if they are caught by the authorities. 27. During the reporting period, there appears to have been an increased crackdown by the authorities on the clandestine use of Chinese mobile phones along the border with China. Where it was previously reportedly relatively easy to communicate with the outside world through such mobile phones, interference with mobile phone signals has reportedly become more effective. There were credible reports that conversations on mobile phones with those inside the country were becoming more infrequent even compared to 2014. When they take place, conversations on mobile phones reportedly tend to end quickly as users fear being detected by the authorities. 6 6 ITU and UNESCO, The State of Broadband 2015: Broadband as a Foundation for Sustainable Development (Geneva, ITU and UNESCO, 2015), annex 5. Available at www.broadbandcommission.org/documents/reports/bb-annualreport2015.pdf.