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By Hyonhee Shin
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea’s coronavirus curbs have aggravated the nation’s human rights violations, a United Nations report mentioned on Thursday, citing additional restrictions on entry to info, tighter border safety and heightened digital surveillance.
The report, launched by the U.N. human rights workplace in Seoul and to be offered to the Basic Meeting in October, comes as rights teams say numerous authoritarian governments the world over have exploited the COVID disaster to tighten their grips and persecute opponents.
Primarily based on interviews with defectors, info from different U.N. companies and open supply supplies, the report says North Korea’s border closure in early 2020 added to curbs on entry to exterior info. Authorities bolstered the army’s presence, fences and closed-circuit tv cameras and movement detectors alongside the border, the report mentioned.
The nation additionally employed new applied sciences, equivalent to digital watermarking and the modification of {hardware}, to conduct surveillance and suppress entry to international media content material, whereas jamming radio frequencies from exterior North Korea.
These measures made it “tougher for info to enter the nation, equivalent to by the distribution of USB reminiscence sticks and micro SD playing cards,” the report mentioned.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm the report’s contents.
Pyongyang has repeatedly rejected accusations of rights abuses and criticised U.N. investigations on its state of affairs as a U.S.-backed scheme to intervene with its inner affairs.
The remoted nation declared victory over COVID and eased some restrictions, together with a face masks mandate besides in border areas, this month after reporting its first-ever outbreak in Might.
North Korea has by no means confirmed how many individuals caught the virus in whole, however as a substitute reported day by day tallies of fever instances till late final month.
The report additionally mentioned the outbreak might have worsened North Koreans’ entry to satisfactory meals and healthcare, citing a scarcity of medical infrastructure.
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Enhancing by Kenneth Maxwell)
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