A/HRC/26/43 opportunity to provide information throughout the process. Regrettably, the commission received no cooperation from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and had no access to the country, despite having made numerous efforts to contact the Government. Some sceptics have sought to discredit the process followed by the commission, claiming that its findings were based solely on information provided by defectors; the Special Rapporteur, however, draws their attention to the fact that, in addition to the 80 victims and other witnesses who testified through public hearings and the more than 240 confidential interviews conducted, the commission also reviewed satellite images, internal documents brought out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, as well as videos, photographs and written materials, including 80 submissions from various sources. The patterns of violations documented by the commission in its report were based on first-hand testimony from multiple witnesses, and corroborated by other information. 14. Investigating the nine patterns of violations identified by the Special Rapporteur in his report submitted in 2013,6 the commission of inquiry categorized the systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations that had been and continued to be committed into six categories: arbitrary detention, torture, executions and enforced disappearance to political prison camps; violations of the freedoms of thought, expression and religion; discrimination on the basis of State-assigned social class, gender, and disability; violations of the freedom of movement and residence, including the right to leave one’s own country; violations of the right to food and related aspects of the right to life; and enforced disappearance of persons from other countries, including through international abductions. 15. It was on the basis of this body of testimony and other information received concerning each of these patterns of violations that the commission determined that its findings constituted reasonable grounds to conclude that crimes against humanity had been committed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea so as to merit a criminal investigation by a competent national or international organ of justice.7 It found that these crimes against humanity entailed 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 found that crimes against humanity were ongoing in the State “because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place”.8 B. Following the track of international law 16. The Special Rapporteur cannot emphasize enough the significance of the international law implications of the revelation of the truth achieved by the commission of inquiry. For the first time ever, an investigation mandated by the highest intergovernmental body within the United Nations system responsible for human rights, namely, the Human Rights Council, documented and concluded that a number of long-standing and ongoing patterns of systematic and widespread violations in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea met the high threshold required for proof of crimes against humanity in international law.9 The perpetrators enjoy impunity because they act in accordance with State policy. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is unwilling to implement its international obligation to prosecute and bring the perpetrators to justice. 6 7 8 9 6 A/HRC/22/57. Ibid., para. 74. Ibid., para. 76. Ibid., para. 85.