WATCH THE VIDEO
This is North Korea's largest political prison, Camp 16, shown in a satellite image taken on May 25th.
Located in Whaseong-gun, Hamkyungbuk-do, the camp is about 560 square kilometers -- equivalent to half the size of the capital of Pyongyang.
The images, released as part of a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International, show new housing blocks have been added to the site, when compared with images taken of the camp two years ago.
The human rights group estimates that the number of inmates at the camp has increased slightly from the previously estimated number of 20-thousand two years ago.
The report also includes testimony from a North Korean defector surnamed Lee who worked as a guard at Camp 16 from the 1980s to the mid-1990s.
Lee said that detainees were forced to dig their own graves and were then killed with hammer blows to their necks.
The former guard said he also witnessed prison officials strangling detainees and then beating them to death with wooden sticks.
He said the officials also frequently raped the female inmates before killing them.
Amnesty International has called on North Korea to close the camps immediately and urged countries like China to stop repatriating North Koreans who flee the country on the grounds that they will likely be sent to the gulag.
Sohn Jung-in, Arirang News.
No comments:
Post a Comment